Medical Telepresence Robot Navigation Around Human Social Zones
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing medical telepresence robots struggle to navigate healthcare facilities while adhering to social protocols and avoiding obstacles, which can lead to discomfort or anxiety for humans in their vicinity.
Innovation Solution
The development of a medical telepresence robot equipped with a social behaviors component that enables autonomous or semi-autonomous navigation, allowing the robot to recognize and respond to human presence, maintain socially acceptable distances, and adjust its behavior to comply with social protocols.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the robot navigates autonomously through healthcare facilities, then navigation efficiency is improved, but social protocol compliance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The robot dynamically adjusts its navigation behavior based on detected human presence. When humans are detected, the robot modifies its path, speed, and positioning to maintain socially acceptable distances. This dynamic adaptation allows the robot to navigate efficiently while complying with social protocols in different contexts.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot uses sensors to continuously detect human presence and receives feedback about social boundaries. Based on this feedback, the navigation system adjusts its path planning and execution to maintain appropriate distances from humans, ensuring social protocol compliance while achieving navigation goals.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If the robot maintains socially acceptable distances from humans, then human comfort is improved, but navigation speed deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The robot dynamically adjusts its speed based on proximity to humans. When approaching human-defined boundaries, the robot automatically reduces speed to maintain socially acceptable distances. This speed modulation ensures human comfort while still achieving navigation objectives through adaptive pace adjustment.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot changes its motion parameters (speed, acceleration, positioning) in response to detected human presence and boundary conditions. By adjusting these parameters dynamically, the robot maintains human comfort through appropriate distancing while completing navigation tasks.
3Extent of automation
If the robot uses autonomous navigation, then operational efficiency is improved, but social awareness deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The autonomous navigation system incorporates feedback from human presence detection and social boundary identification. This feedback loop enables the robot to adjust its autonomous behavior in real-time, maintaining social awareness while operating autonomously. The system learns and adapts to social contexts through continuous environmental sensing and response.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot uses detected human presence and identified social boundaries as intermediaries between autonomous navigation and social protocol compliance. These intermediaries translate social concepts into navigational parameters, enabling the autonomous system to exhibit socially aware behavior through mediating detection and response mechanisms.
Data Source
AI summary
Devices, systems, and methods for social behavior of a telepresence robot are disclosed herein. A telepresence robot includes a drive system configured to move the telepresence robot, a control system configured to control the drive system to drive the telepresence robot around a work area along a first navigational path, an object detection system configured to detect a plurality of objects along the first navigational path, an object classification system configured to identifying one or more classifications for at least two objects of the plurality of objects, and a social path component configured to determine that the first navigational path passes through a zone between the at least two objects, and in response to the one or more classifications satisfying at least one condition, changing the first navigational path to a second navigational path that avoids passing through the zone between the at least two objects.