Design and Implementation of a Device Management System for Healthcare Assistive Robots: Sensor Manager System Version 2

Abstract

This paper presents the second version of a sensor manager system designed for social robotics such as healthcare service robots. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new design based on the Version 1 system, which helps robots manage vital sign measuring devices and solve some practical issues such as load capacity and power supply. The first version has some limitations, for example, response time, and it does not support closed control protocol healthcare devices (CCPD) that only allow data access from the manufacturer’s server. The second version has four new concepts including the API, the sensor device system for CCPDs, optimization for the multi-client environment and a GUI. The new version is designed as a web server in order to improve the performance. All communication methods are unified based on the WebSocket for a better compatibility with various robot platforms and devices. We did functionality experiments, and the results show the response time is shorten more than 90% and the new system works well with robots and medical devices.