Design and implementation of an omnidirectional mobile robot for medicine delivery in hospitals during the COVID-19 epidemic

In the aftermath of the Corona epidemic, mobile robots have played an active part in health services and patient care. The primary purpose of deploying these robots is to eliminate human touch while still ensuring that medications are given to patients in hospitals. This will reduce the hazard for medical personnel who are actively involved in the COVID-19 epidemic. This paper describes the design and building of a mobile robot that can travel in all directions without the use of steering gear, and that uses a particular form of caster called mecanum wheels to work inside hospital hallways to deliver medications to patients while minimizing human touch. The depth camera and LIDAR were utilized as sensors to detect the environment in which the robot operates. This robot is operated by a Robot Operating System that employs the Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm.