By 
Zimbabwean-born robotics inventor and entrepreneur based in the United Kingdom (UK) William Sachiti has developed a helper robot for Milton Keynes University Hospital in the UK.
Dubbed Milton, the robot works alongside healthcare workers and uses technology from self driving vehicles to support the increased demand on logistical activities such as transporting of medicine,specimens and clinical supplies around the hospital to improve care and experience patience receive while bringing relief to the hospital staff.
According to Sachiti the creation of Milton was a way of assisting health care workers through reducing increased demand and pressure around hospitals.
“Following our work delivering medicines during the COVID-19 pandemic, in late 2021, a pioneering NHS Trust, Milton Keynes University Hospital, approached us with a challenge: how could our technology be used to work alongside the existing workforce to support the increased demand on logistical activities (moving medicines, specimens, and clinical supplies etc) around the hospital to ultimately improve the care and experience patients receive?,”
He added, “At first we really had reservations about how best this could be done without it having a negative impact on the human experience, but three things quickly became clear: just how far people have to travel everyday in hospitals to deliver anything that’s needed.How incredibly dedicated hospital workers are to delivering the best possible care for patients and to doing so in a way that only humans can: with empathy, kindness and often with a great sense of humour.The staff wanted support and needed it to relieve some of the pressure.
“After a series of meetings and workshops with the hospital staff, it seemed we might actually be uniquely qualified to try and take on such a challenge – to safely introduce hospital robots in a non-intrusive way.
Sachiti has already worked on autonomous technology for the ‘Kar-Go’ self-driving vehicle.Just like Kar-Go, the robot uses sonar and LiDAR technology to navigate around obstacles such as people, wheelchairs and beds inside the hospital.
Milton uses a combination of three types of sensors to see both into the distance and to understand how close objects are and how they are moving in relation to its own path. Sonar for sound navigation and ranging.LiDAR a method of remote sensing using a laser scanners and computer vision which lets the bot derive information from images, videos and other visual inputs and take actions accordingly
The bot will potentially be rolled out to other hospital this year.
Comments