Advances in an Autonomous Healthcare Mobile Robot for Contact-Less Vital-Sign Measurement

The US healthcare system struggles to provide access to quality healthcare in the face of shortages of healthcare workers. Robots have the potential to support healthcare, offloading common, simpler tasks from nurses to robots, and allowing humans to focus on higher-complexity work. They could also improve access to healthcare in areas with limited care workers and increase equity in healthcare. There may be particular value in a mobile manipulation robot that could perform various tasks, including common clinical tasks like vital sign measurement and medicine delivery. To allow adoption of autonomous healthcare robots and other care automation in clinical settings, these technologies require methods to ensure their safety and effectiveness. We present a robotic system in which a mobile manipulation robot performs contact-free vital sign measurement in a healthcare setting. Our work focuses on assured development of the system, creating redundant, fail-safe systems-of-systems to avoid particularly harmful or undesirable outcomes.