KOCHI: From screening body temperature to sanitising places, robots are playing a major role in helping human beings fight the Covid pandemic, especially in the health sector. Since health workers deal closely with patients, they are at a higher risk of contracting the infection and are hence being replaced by humanoid robots to reduce the risk of contracting the infection. Providing a helping hand to health workers, CET-CovBot V 1.0, a Covid Care Robot was developed by students of MTech Robotics & Automation (2018-20 Batch) under CET-Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (CCIR).
Designed and developed under the leadership of Sanjuna Mariam Mathews, the team includes Ajmal M, Rojin Reji Philip, Harikrishnan K and Arun Shankar M. “For my final year MTech thesis project, I had developed a mobile robot. When I heard the news of the Covid-19 spread in China, I thought of integrating the application of Covid care services in my mobile robot.
After presenting the project to faculty members, we got a call from Dr Shiju Majeed of Medical College hospital, who requested us to develop the robot,” shares Sanjuna Mariam Mathews, team lead. The project was guided by Sreeja S, assistant professor, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, CET, and has been fully funded by LightHouse, alumni association of the 1987-91 batch of CET.
How does Covid care robots work?
Developed in under two months, the service robot can not only be controlled using Joystick but also has a navigation system. The robot has a user interface for remote user operation and can be linked with smartphones and tablets for tele-medicine. It is designed based on the Robot Operating System(ROS). CET-Covbot V1.0 can perform tasks such as automatic sanitiser dispensing mechanism, remote patient assistance, delivering food and medicines to patients and announcing Covid-19 related messages and providing warnings.
The system can be set up and mapped in a new environment in just under two hours. Dynamic obstacle avoidance developed as an open-source system has also been integrated into the robot. The unit is capable of carrying loads up to 40 kg and can efficiently perform transport and delivery of food and other necessary items.