An approach to design human assisting prototype robot for providing fast and hygienically secure environment to clinical professionals in order to fight against COVID19 in Hospitals

Abstract

In the current era robots play vital role in several industries, hospitals, and research organizations etc. In hospitals robots support and nursing staff currently may also use in this era during COVID19 Pandemic to transport such patient sample or dispose of their usage belonging to avoid spreading of this pandemic to clinical staff. From making deliveries, dispensing medication, visiting patients to aiding surgeries, robots are improving the way hospitals function. Central Sterilization Supply Department (CSSD) offers sterilization amenities to Outpatient Department (OPDs), wards and operation theatre (OT) of hospitals. It provides facilities to receive, clean, pack, disinfects, sterilizes, store and distribute instruments, in accordance with well-delineated protocols and standardizes procedures. An alarming boost in Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI) demonstrates the necessity of a well-organized CSSD to prevent surge in HAI. Although quality assurance procedures are followed to ensure safety and efficiency at all levels: appropriate handling of contaminated items, decontamination, proper cleansing, and instrument care, but the necessity of human presence to implement these procedure in-creases the threat of HAI. Thus, an intelligent autonomous multi-sensor wireless controlled NXT robot using MATLAB is proposed to handle contaminated items and sterilize equipments in the centralized sterilization sup-ply department. The proposed system is entirely automated and eliminates the need of human presence to implement quality assurance procedures, thus decreasing the threat of HAI. An archetype using Lego NXT robotic kit is developed to implement tasks performed in CSSD. MATLAB is used to control NXT robot instead of Lego Mindstorms software, due to its versatility, capability to perform computationally intensive tasks and wide usage by researchers. A powerful control system is designed that allows user to interrupt, control and monitor autonomous NXT robots.