Design of an intelligent hospital service robot and its applications

Abstract

The paper presents the design concepts of an intelligent hospital service robot (IHSR). The IHSR aims at saving human resources and also improving the hospital service. The navigation path planning can be concluded by an information decision making system. It is decided from the distribution of people in the hospital. For obstacle avoidance, the IHSR mounts a CCD camera and its attachments to determine the relative directions of obstacles. There are nine ultrasonic sensors installed on the IHSR to detect the distances between the IHSR and obstacles. An integrated fuzzy controller is proposed as the collision-free navigation control system. In which, there are two fuzzy subcontrollers designed for objective navigation and collision-free control respectively. Simulation results show that the IHSR is indeed able to accomplish navigation control in hospital environment.