Medical round robot tracking a specified person based on highly accurate position estimation considering attitude angle compensation of wearable sensor

Abstract

We have developed an innovative medical round robot “Terapio” in hospitals. This novel robot is mainly tasked to deliver medical armamentarium and manage round data. An implemented omni-directional mobile mechanism and a person tracking control system to follow a medical doctor realize smooth transferring movement from a nurse station to a patient's bedroom. In this paper, person tracking control using both Laser Range Finders(LRFs) and inertial sensor is proposed to avoid occlusion problem in hidden space of target person and also not to see the target among many passengers. Then, high accuracy position estimation by compensated inertial sensor data considering attitude angle information has been investigated. Person tracking experiments in an occlusion environment and in some passengers have been done, and then the effectiveness of the proposed method has been demonstrated.