StudentProject about an Autonomous Bed Mover

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Hello we’re a group of students from the University of Southern Denmark. Who has taken the task up to make an universal bed-mover, which will navigate in the hospital autonomous. During the idea and concept phase we’re encountering some issue that we visualize could be a problem for the robot to solve, due to our lack of experts knowledge in autonomous robotic systems, we most reach out for a helping hand.

Basically the bed-mover will have to transport the beds from one room to another and also in different floor levels, sometimes with patients in it, so patient care is important and also without patients.

Some of the issues we’re thinking could arise is:

We image the robot will have to recognise the specific bed it has to pick up either by one of the following systems/methods:

Placing a beacon/button on the beds so the robot would know where to go and which bed to move. Make a barcode for each bed so the robot would know which bed to take. Place a button on the room doors so you could summon the robot, and then have a beacon/button placed on the bed so it would know which one to take.

But if a nurse would happen to manually move the bed, then how will the bed mover be able to recognise it and find the new position for the bed?

Also we need to make sure it doesn’t just take off with a patient when it was meant to pick up an empty bed - so some weight measuring or thermal inspection might also be needed in the system.

This is just what we’ve been visualizing for now, but probably 50 other scenarios could happen.

So what other issues are there to be aware off when implementing an autonomous system around other people?

Thanks, if something is unclear just, say it and we’ll explain further.

Attached is a map of the component we believe the robotics platform should consist of also.

Best regards.