Robot for Specimen Collection and Delivery in Government Quarantine Center

I&T Wish Robot for Specimen Collection and Delivery in Government Quarantine Center
(REF: W-0332)
Matched I&T Solution
Trial Project
Summary and Challenges The purpose of this project is to develop an outdoor IoT autonomous mobile robot (AMR) equipped with LIDAR, self-built maps, accurate navigation and obstacle avoidance modules, to collect saliva specimen from each accommodation unit for persons in quarantine at Government Quarantine Centre in order to facilitate the performance of medical surveillance; relieve the manpower constraint and minimize the risk of cross infection in the quarantine center.
Expected Outcome
  1. The autonomous mobile robot (AMR) is able to work in outdoor environment and sustainable with all weather (e.g. rainy and windy environment), and outdoor concrete bumpy road surface.
  2. Equip with robotic vision or other methods to identify the unit number of the accommodation for persons in quarantine; and to locate bags of specimen (The size of the specimen bag is (a Biohazard Zipped bag) : 16.5 x 25 cm enclosing a Transparent Zipped bag: 10 x 20 cm)
  3. Apart from collection of specimen bags from the units on ground level, i.e. the robot may extend across the adjoining road and the corridor of around 2.1 m in width and to a height of around 1.1m to 1.6 m. If possible, as there is no elevator, has ability to perform vertical reach from ground level to 1st level (around 4.5m height from the ground level) and across the 2.1m corridor. Or the Robot is capable of climbing stairs, each step is around 0.12m height.
  4. Equip with a handling manipulator for holding specimens to collection tray.
  5. Equip with self-disinfection device for cleansing the manipulator after each collection.
  6. Equip with a container of minimum capacity to store all specimens from one block (total 16 units per block, may have one to two specimens per unit, ~32 bags per block)
  7. Require outdoor robotic charging at in-between stops. Once the robot finishes collection of specimens from the block, the robot shall return to the starting point (medical post) for emptying all the specimen bags before the next round of collection. Travelling distance from each collection points to medical post ranges from 10m to 300m.
  8. Means to protect specimens from sunlight and rain or any external impacts during the collection process shall be in place. * Accommodations for persons in quarantine are built on blocks. Each block is divided into two levels, the ground level and the 1st level, and usually will have 8 units on one level.
Expected Trial Duration 2 months
Contact Information
I&T Wish Proposer:Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD)
Contact Person:Mr TIU Yat Ho
Position:Engineer/Health/Project 1/1
Tel:38522013
Email: yhtiu@emsd.gov.hk
Initiating Department Department of Health (DH)
Upload Date 2020-10-15
Closing Date 2020-10-29
Propose I&T Solution Closed