Autonomous Mobile Robot in Hospital: Product Design and Development Perspective

Autonomous mobile robots (AMR) have been used in various intralogistics applications, especially in healthcare and hospitals. They are used for improving efficiency and accuracy of the transportation of items, e.g. pharmaceutical items and medical devices. AMRs are able to automatically navigate to predefined destination in particular working area. AMRs are considered a complex system integrating between a number of modules, in regard to mechanism, sensors, actuators, electrical and electronics, dynamic control, artificial intelligence, and etc. Developing of the AMRs must be done systematically. The engineering perspective in Product Design and Development (PDD) is explained in every stage: planning, concept development, system,-level design, prototyping, and testing in hospitals. The AMR for transporting hospital carts, named “CARVER-LT”, is used as a case study.