Abstract
The recent advances in technology have increased flexibility in indoor mobility and human-robot collaboration, opening up new opportunities to perform material handling tasks, especially in narrow, dynamic environments, such as hospitals. Sensing devices, powerful on-board computers, artificial intelligence, and collaborative equipment allow autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to drive and fulfill material handling activities autonomously. In hospitals, material handling activities are widely performed manually. This study investigates five innovative applications of AMRs, highlighting their benefits compared with other material handling systems applied in hospitals, and presenting research needs. The study concludes that AMRs can support and collaborate closely with hospital personnel to increase value-added time for patient care.
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Acknowledgment
This research received funding from the strategic research area of NTNU Health in 2020 at NTNU. The authors would also like to express their gratitude to the Regional Development Fund in Denmark for supporting the project “Reference architecture and open standards”. Finally, the authors gratefully acknowledge the case hospitals that made it possible to carry out this study.
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Fragapane, G., Hvolby, HH., Sgarbossa, F., Strandhagen, J.O. (2020). Autonomous Mobile Robots in Hospital Logistics. In: Lalic, B., Majstorovic, V., Marjanovic, U., von Cieminski, G., Romero, D. (eds) Advances in Production Management Systems. The Path to Digital Transformation and Innovation of Production Management Systems. APMS 2020. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 591. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57993-7_76
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57993-7_76
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