HospiBot

The Interreg project “HospiBot” aims to develop hospital robots. The goal is to create an interactive, modular, multi-purpose service robot for use in hospital corridors. These robots can serve multiple purposes, such as greeting and guiding patients arriving at the hospital, minor logistical tasks, light cleaning, sanitation, patrolling, parking registration, etc. Part of the project is to conduct use cases at three hospitals and, in parallel, to develop policies for the use of mobile service robots in hospitals. Lead partner for the project is the University of Southern Denmark.

The background for the project is that the demographic challenge is becoming a serious problem for devel-oped countries such as Germany and Denmark: People are living longer and the proportion of older people in the population is increasing. This puts a huge burden on healthcare. Automation and the use of robots can help streamline processes, make hospitals more efficient and comfort-able, and free up staff for patient-related tasks where robots cannot be used.

Denmark and Germany have seen increased automation of hospital processes in recent years. One already can see robots in hospital corridors, but these robots are still unable to perform more advanced tasks. With this in mind, the project will create a new, interactive, modular mobile service robot with a small foot-print that can perform complex tasks: Welcoming and guiding, patrolling, assisting patients with non-medical needs, small-scale logistics, light cleaning and surface disinfection. To address the lack of regulations/policies regarding robots in hospitals, the project will also discuss the de-velopment of a set of guidelines regarding hospital robots. This will lead to cross-border standardisation, which in turn will result in easier adoption of robots in hospitals.