Thanks to the strong cooperation, generous support from the private sector and dedication of the Institute of FIeld RoBOtics (FIBO), King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), and FIBO AGAINST COVID-19 or FACO Robots are now ready to be handed over to the hospitals for real action.
Recently, the development team has tested and simulated the robotics and centralized control systems. As designed and carefully planned, the robots can precisely arrive at designated locations without errors which has made FIBO believe that they can provide a solution to an overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients and workload at the hospitals.
FACO prototypes have been developed to lessen the tasks of healthcare personnel in taking care of COVID-19 patients as well as reducing direct contact with patients thus lowering the risk of contracting the coronavirus among healthcare workers. There are three prototypes as follows:
(1) Carver-Cab2020a, an autonomous mobile robot designed to perform several tasks e.g. delivering food, medications and medical supplies for inpatients. Carver-Cab2020a can deliver up to 20 food trays each time. Controlled through a hydroxyl generator, the robot is equipped with air purifying and viral disinfectant functions to sanitize the hospital around the clock.
(2) SOFA is a service robot for telemedicine. With the screen displaying the treatment record or diagnosis results which are connected with the hospital system, the physicians can remotely command SOFA robot from the centralized control center to travel to designated areas. SOFA is also equipped with a thermal camera to monitor patients’ temperature and a high definition magnifying camera which can magnify the object 20 times the original size allowing the doctors to check general physical condition of patients e.g. eyes and tongues – from a distance. In addition, SOFA has a videoconferencing system to enable both patients and physicians to make video calls to communicate with each other in real-time.
(3) Service Robot- the third type of robot is able to convey medicine and food to patients with special needs at specific locations. It has been designed to automatically travel to the target areas by remotely controlling from a centralized center. The patients can interact with the robot to communicate with doctors and nurses. All robots are connected with the hospital WI-FI system. In the future, we plan to deploy 5G 2600 MHz technology as well as cloud computing via 5G using 26-28 GHz to fully leverage the capabilities of the robots.