Mobile Robots in Hospital Environments: an Installation Case Study

This paper discusses a number of issues arose during the deployment of a commercial robotic platform in a hospital scenario. In particular, a realistic case study and installation process at Polyclinic of Modena (Italy) is described, where robots have to accomplish two different types of tasks, namely drugs delivery and waste transportation. The lesson learned is that the design of a robot to be used in civilian environments must not only take into account state of the art and dependable algorithms, but also consider real-world issues (i.e., not strictly scientific or technological) when adopting techniques for navigation, obstacle avoidance or localization. The paper discusses the most important features of the overall system architecture that have been modified and the solutions that have been selected to deal with this realistic scenario.