Wheelchair Robot Service on Smart Medical Facilities and its Evaluation

This paper describes the on-demand patient service system which uses RFID tags and a wheelchair robot in medical facilities. In this system, the robot can identify a patient and obtain his/her diagnosis schedule by the RFID tag in his/her registration card. According to the schedule, the robot can carry the patient to his/her target examination room. To construct this system, we employ the idea of the intelligent environment, called “Robot Town”. Many sensors are distributed in Robot Town, and robots can easily move and work by using the sensors. We executed a proving experiment with our system under the scenario that assumed an outpatient came to the unfamiliar and large medical facility. In addition, to evaluate our system, we executed the questionnaire survey to nurses. As the result of survey, we know that their expected points are an improvement of the daily work efficiency, safe transportation of patients and an improvement of an amenity level in a hospital. And, we also know that their worried points are safety of the robots, the abilities of detection to the unexpected emergency situations, costs and difficulties of maintenance of systems, and responsibilities in case of accidents.