Design of an automatic positioning device for mobile assistance robotics applications

Many countries around the world are facing an increasingly serious aging problem. The elderly make up an increasing proportion of the total population. However, the number of doctors and nurses cannot meet this demand. Many hospitals and nursing homes are overcrowded and lack staff, so many elderly people, are not cared for. In order to solve this problem, in recent years, researchers have begun to develop some autonomous machines tailored to assistance to weak or non-self-sufficient subjects. These robots can greatly relieve the work pressure of medical staff. Since the end of 2019, the Covid-19 virus has been spreading around the world, which has highlighted the importance of automated care devices. To prevent infection, doctors and nurses had to wear airtight, uncomfortable protective suits to work in isolation wards caring for patients. The large number of patients makes the medical staff have to overwork every day. The application of assistive robots can not only relieve the pressure of medical staff but also avoid direct contact with patients to prevent infection. This paper describes an innovative modular robotic device to fulfill various monitoring and basic assistance tasks. The device exhibits strong maneuverable and full on-plane mobility to cover most of the indoor assistance applications. Compared with other assistive robots, the robot overcomes the difficulties that the hospital beds are high and equipped with handrails, and can directly interact with patients lying on the bed through a telescopic device. In chapter 2, different schemes are proposed, including the design of the linear telescopic device and curved telescopic device. To compare the feasibility and pros and cons of the two techniques, kinematics analysis and center of gravity position analysis are performed in chapter 3. In the last chapter, this paper proposes a prototype equipped with a linear telescopic device, and the appearance of the prototype is designed and discussed.