An Experimental Framework for Automated Bed Localization and Drug Identification Using ZigBee Signal Strength and Mobile Robot

Abstract

Appropriate drug delivery and precise medicine dosage administration is a must in hospitals. This paper presents an experimental evaluation of a reliable, low power indoor bed tracking and drug identification system for hospital ward environment. Correct bed identification and equivalent medicines are recognized using received signal strength indication (RSSI) of the Zigbee network and mobile robot. A commercially available Firebird V- ATMEGA 2560 robot, communicates with medicine dispensing station through a ZigBee network of open IEEE 802.15.4. Radio map of RSSI and database of corresponding bed coordinates and also matching drug for that bed coordinates is developed offline. The moving robot matches up to the stored radio map with real-time RSSI, identifies bed coordinates and categorizes equivalent medicine. Without any calibration efforts, the moving robot has achieved a success rate of 92 % in detecting and identifying medicines to 4 testbeds placed in an open room environment, after 50 trials. The proposed technique does not need any additional special hard wares in contrast to hospital robotic delivery using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.