Autonomous Wheelchairs Deployment in Healthcare Facilities: Requirements and Challenges

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Healthcare Technology

Background:

• Current autonomous wheelchairs excel in simple navigation but fail to meet complex clinical needs.
• Key challenges include infrastructure interaction, social navigation in crowded spaces, and fallback mechanisms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify unmet clinical requirements for autonomous wheelchairs.
• To propose a research agenda for next-generation autonomous wheelchair development.
• To present a prototype addressing these requirements.

Main Methods:

• Literature review and gap analysis of autonomous wheelchair capabilities in healthcare settings.
• Development of a vision paper outlining requirements for advanced autonomous wheelchairs.
• Prototyping of the SWee system with a focus on on-device, modular edge-box architecture (VOCAR).

Main Results:

• Identified critical gaps in building/workflow compatibility, recovery modes, semantic goal grounding, and on-device architectures.
• The SWee prototype demonstrates clinical deployability through its VOCAR architecture.
• VOCAR integrates onboard sensing and language-grounded goal specification for enhanced functionality.

Conclusions:

• Autonomous wheelchairs require a paradigm shift beyond basic navigation to address clinical realities.
• The proposed requirements and SWee prototype offer a path towards more integrated and reliable autonomous mobility solutions in healthcare.
• Future autonomous wheelchairs must prioritize safety, adaptability, and seamless interaction with the healthcare environment.