A Mobile Robot with a Manipulator to Alleviate the Shortage of Health Workers in Hospitals in COVID 19

Abstract

COVID-19 has brought an unprecedented burden to hospitals. Hospitals are facing many problems, such as understaffing and infected employees. But this has also promoted the development of hospital robots to a certain extent. This paper aimed to develop a robot that can move around the hospital and pick and send stuff to patients. The robot is mainly divided into 2 two parts: the moving part and the grasping part. The moving part includes map construction, localization, and navigation with gmapping, A*, and DWA algorithms that would stimulate on the ROS platform. For the grasping part, the forward and inverse kinematics of the robot arm and PD control would be analyzed using MATLAB with the Robotics System Toolbox, Simulink, and Simscape Multibody to simulate and control the robot arm. Using this approach, the robot can reach the target position and avoid dynamic obstacles. In addition, the robot arm can pick up and drop the ball with the designed trajectory.