PAL Robotics SL
Project dates
Full title of the project:
Fast Deployment of Autonomous Vehicles to Help Hospital Staff Fight COVID-19
Short name of the project:
Fast Deployment of AVs in Hospitals
Date of the award:
27/06/2020
Project duration:
8 weeks
Company:
PAL Robotics SL
Country:
Spain
Company Website:
http://pal-robotics.com/
Abstract
Hospitals and healthcare institutions are facing unprecedented challenges, including challenges in logistics which go beyond the current global COVID-19 pandemic. Delivering medication, documents, blood samples and other supplies is time consuming for caregivers and nurses and puts them at increased risk of infection, as well as wasting valuable time. In looking at technological solutions, we also recognise that hospitals need solutions that will be reliable, intuitive and won’t need a high level of training.
We believe that robots can support humans with jobs that are time consuming and that pose an increased risk of infection. We are proposing a collaboration between PAL Robotics and Accerion as a solution able to provide Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) to support staff in hospitals or similar environments with movement of different objects such as medication, samples or food. The robot works autonomously and can be easily customized with other functionalities for monitoring health conditions through patient interaction.
TIAGo Delivery by PAL Robotics (http://pal-robotics.com/robots/tiago-base) in combination with Accerion’s positioning technology (https://accerion.tech/) allows AVs to navigate autonomously, finding the best route around the hospital and avoiding obstacles. The modularity of the Hardware and Software on the TIAGo allows upgrading easily. The new and innovative positioning technology from Accerion allows for faster set-up and enables smooth implementation to get the solution up and running as quickly as possible. Accerion sensors provide a robustness compared to the traditional lidar sensor, which will enable the movement required for hospital settings.
There is no need to change the hospital space for this solution to be rolled-out as it adapts to different spaces, therefore there is a potential worldwide deployment as the robot can serve institutes with different space distribution, including smaller health centres and larger field hospitals.
This solution is aimed at helping caregivers on the frontline, in terms of allowing them to focus more on urgent patient treatment and care, while the robot attends to deliveries around the hospital. The robot is easy to deploy, it comes with an easy-to-use interface and is able to understand the commands of non-specially trained personnel. It also helps to lessen social interactions of hospital staff with patients, potentially reducing hospital infection rates.
In summary, the proposed solution is an autonomous robot for transportation of goods ready to help tackle the COVID-19 crisis in hospitals and care centers by making deliveries to patients, allowing caregivers on the frontline to focus more on urgent patient treatment and care and helping reduce interactions and therefore infection rates.
Major project results and impact created by autonomous transportation of sensible goods including a multi-sensory system for SLAM and object recognition and precise delivery:
- Logistic solution adaptable to varied environments