Autonomous Fever Detection, Medicine Delivery, and Environmental Disinfection for Pandemic Prevention

Abstract

In facing the outbreak of the pandemic, robots are highly appealing for their non-contact nature. Among them, we have selected the mobile robot manipulator to develop an autonomous system for pandemic prevention, as it possesses both mobility and manipulability. The robot was used as a platform for performing autonomous fever detection, medicine delivery, and environmental disinfection system for the fever station and isolation ward, which are the two primary units that deal with the pandemic in a hospital. The proposed novel algorithms aim to ensure both human safety and comfort by automating fever detection and recognizing medicine taking. Additionally, they address environmental disinfection by effectively covering blind spots. We conducted a series of experiments to evaluate their performance in a hospital-like setting, which was designed specifically for the testing of intelligent medical systems developed in our university. Quantitative assessment was administered to analyze how the introduction of the proposed autonomous system reduced the risk of infection, and feedback was also collected from participants through questionnaires.