i-Merc: A Mobile Robot to Deliver Meals inside Health Services Fernando Carreira Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa, DEM Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon Lisbon, Portugal fcarreira@dem.isel.ipl.pt Tomé Canas (1) , Arlindo Silva (3) and Carlos Cardeira (3) Instituto Superior Técnico, (1) IN+, (2) ICEMS, (3) GCAR-IDMEC Technical University of Lisbon Lisbon, Portugal tome.canas@sapo.pt,{asilva@alfa.,carlos.cardeira@}ist.utl.pt Abstract— With the aim of increasing the quality of the meals transportation service inside hospitals and health care centers (HHCC), we are developing a dedicated mobile robot to perform this service, the i-MERC. This robot is equipped with a heating system in the meals compartment which guarantees the meals temperature and prevents bacteriologic proliferation. The i-MERC also integrates a personalized diets information system where information about patients’ diets can be introduced and accessed by the service personnel. This project has been developed within the compass of the Master in Engineering Design, at the Technical University of Lisbon. The product development of the robot addressed many knowledge areas, some of which are presented in this paper. We finished the first stage of the project with a service concept, a virtual prototype which included some key specifications and a physical prototype. Presently, we are continuing the product development and searching some stakeholders that would be interested in the project. Keywords— Mobile Robots, systems design, prototyping, navigation, control, virtual reality I. INTRODUCTION In the present times there is a great concern in endowing the health care centers with increasingly more qualified services. This concern has motivated the development of services and products within different application areas which had the final goal of improving the patients’ quality of life. One of the great challenges inside hospitals is the creation of a logistic service which would be responsible for transporting the meals from the kitchen to the patients’ rooms and for returning the respective soiled dishes safely, preventing all possible contamination, be it through the meal, or the service personnel. In this paper we will present, in the second section, the current organization of the meals services inside hospitals and HHCC and the existing risks. We will also present the meals transporters normally used in common HHCC and in the more technologically advanced ones and, finally, we will present the main concerns of dieticians regarding patients’ personalized diets. In the third section, we will propose a new service concept and suggest how the product, the i-MERC, can improve the quality of the meals transportation service. The product development will be addressed in the fourth section, where studies focusing on the meals compartment, chassis structure, control architecture, virtual simulation and orientation system will be presented. The fifth section will present a physical prototype of i-MERC, which was used to demonstrate a real itinerary of the mobile robot inside a HHCC. This prototype can be used to attract potential partners or stakeholders to the project. Finally, in the sixth section, we will present some conclusions about the present product development and define future tasks that should be undertaken in the near future. II. THE MEALS SERVICE INSIDE HHCC The meals distribution service is one of the most important aspects inside hospitals and similar health services since the quality of the food strongly influences the patients’ recovery. Thus, extreme care is taken not only with regard to the food preparation but also to the transport between kitchen and patients. The later task normally takes between 10 to 30 minutes, a sufficient time for the meals temperature to decrease below 60ºC, the limit temperature below which bacteriologic proliferation may occur [1]. Normally, meals transportation is carried out by dedicated people that use trolleys specially devised for this service. A survey to some HHCC allowed us to conclude that the main drawbacks to traditional transport devices are their weight and the difficulty in handling them. Some of the more innovative HHCC in the world started using mobile robots such as the HelpMate [2] or Transcar [3] to transport different types of cargos between persons in services. These mobile robots contributed to improving the quality of services, since these autonomous couriers can work 24-7 all year round with a constant performance, causing the service to become more efficient and faster. Additionally, there is the benefit of relieving some personnel to more critical activities [4]. However, because HHCC general purpose mobile robots transport different types of cargos, there is some the risk of meal contaminations, which could result in serious health problems to the patients. Another major concern to hospital dieticians is the patient’s personalized diet and the way of guaranteeing the information