Navigation benchmarking for autonomous mobile robots in hospital environment.

Area of Science:

• Robotics in Healthcare
• Human-Robot Interaction
• Medical Technology Assessment

Background:

• Robotic technologies are increasingly used in healthcare to improve procedures and patient care.
• Ensuring the safety and reliability of autonomous mobile robots in shared human environments is critical.
• Current navigation tests for hospital robots lack standardization and are often preliminary.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the limitations in assessing autonomous mobile robots navigating hospital environments.
• To propose a structured benchmarking protocol with standardized tests of increasing complexity.
• To introduce quantitative performance metrics for robot navigation assessment.

Main Methods:

• Development of a structured benchmarking protocol for robot navigation.
• Inclusion of standardized tests with progressively complex conditions.
• Definition of quantitative performance metrics for evaluation.
• Real-world testing of two distinct robotic platforms (HOSBOT and TIAGo).

Main Results:

• The proposed protocol provides a standardized framework for evaluating robot navigation in clinical settings.
• Quantitative metrics allow for objective comparison of different robotic platforms.
• The study successfully assessed HOSBOT and TIAGo in a realistic hospital environment.

Conclusions:

• The developed protocol overcomes limitations in current hospital robot navigation assessment.
• Standardized testing and quantitative metrics enhance the reliability and comparability of robot performance evaluations.
• This approach is crucial for the safe and effective integration of autonomous robots in healthcare.