Hospital Porter

Patients are frequently moved from one area of a hospital to another, be that to go outside for air or go to a specialised area of the hospital such as an operating theatre. This is a time consuming task and puts considerable expense on the health care institution. This project aimed to provide an alternative to human porters in the form of a wheelchair which can safely navigate through a hospital, bringing patients to their destination. The system provides a means by which the patient can choose to allow the chair to operate completely autonomously or be controlled by the patient themselves. The user can intuitively change between these two modes. This duality of operation is conducive to navigating complex, dynamic environments autonomously while allowing the user retain a degree of control, building their trust in the system. For autonomous control, a kinect sensor was used to detect obstacles.

This project was developed as part of the Idea to Product (I2P) competition.

Hospital Porter prototype with the location of the controller and kinect sensor shown