Medbot Challenge
Robots Improving Efficiency in Hospitals
The use of technology affects humans in various ways, including their safety and comfort. The medical field is relying more heavily on robots to perform common everyday tasks in hospitals. Since hospitals tend to move many materials around the facilities throughout the day, there is a great need for robots in healthcare to perform delivery and transportation tasks. Having robots take on these kinds of tasks make the hospital staff more efficient, saves money, and allows nurses and doctors to focus on patient care.
One of the materials that robots can deliver safely and quickly is medicine. As pharmacists enter prescriptions into their computers, the delivery robots collect the correct type and dosage by scanning the correct bar-codes. The robot then collects and marks medicines, keeping track to ensure that the correct medicine reaches the patient in need. These delivery robots can take the labeled medications to nursing stations or even individual patients' rooms. This is a more efficient method that can speed up the delivery of critical medications to patients, help fill the gap of staff shortages, and keep prescriptions in a safe secure place while in transit.
Some medical delivery robots will travel over 400 miles in a week completing their rounds as they navigate the corridors, ride elevators, and stop at various stations. In addition to delivering medical supplies, some robots are even visiting to check on patients and take their vital signs for doctors. As robotics continues to develop, patients will continue to benefit from robots being in the hospital environment.
One of the materials that robots can deliver safely and quickly is medicine. As pharmacists enter prescriptions into their computers, the delivery robots collect the correct type and dosage by scanning the correct bar-codes. The robot then collects and marks medicines, keeping track to ensure that the correct medicine reaches the patient in need. These delivery robots can take the labeled medications to nursing stations or even individual patients' rooms. This is a more efficient method that can speed up the delivery of critical medications to patients, help fill the gap of staff shortages, and keep prescriptions in a safe secure place while in transit.
Some medical delivery robots will travel over 400 miles in a week completing their rounds as they navigate the corridors, ride elevators, and stop at various stations. In addition to delivering medical supplies, some robots are even visiting to check on patients and take their vital signs for doctors. As robotics continues to develop, patients will continue to benefit from robots being in the hospital environment.
Building Behaviors for an Autonomous Routine
VEX Robotics Competitions require planning an autonomous routine for the 60-second Programming Skills Match of the Robot Skills Challenge, and for the 15-second Autonomous Period of the current year's game. Programming the robot to run autonomously requires breaking down what the robot needs to do into programmable behavior-based code.
Here are some typical behaviors for a VEX competition Robot:
Once you have built the building blocks for these types of behaviors, running a successful autonomous routine simply means planning the order of these actions!
Here are some typical behaviors for a VEX competition Robot:
- Driving forward and reverse
- Turning right and left
- Grabbing a game object
- Precisely placing a game object
- Sorting between different game objects
Once you have built the building blocks for these types of behaviors, running a successful autonomous routine simply means planning the order of these actions!
The Medbot Challenge Challenge
In this challenge, you need to program your robot to navigate a hospital as it delivers medications to patients in several different rooms.
Challenge Rules
Challenge Rules
- The robot must begin and end in the Start Zone.
- The entire robot (all 4 wheels) must be inside the Pharmacy, and the Patient Rooms and wait for the following times in order to complete the actions:
- Pharmacy: Wait 5 seconds to pickup medications.
- Patient Room: Wait 3 seconds drop off medications.
- The robot must not come into contact with or pass over any walls.
- The robot must visit the Pharmacy first to pickup medications for Patient Rooms.
- The robot must visit each of the Patient Rooms (in no particular order) to drop off medication.
How to Save and Open Your Project
When finished, turn in your assignment into Google classroom
Watch this video for step by step instructions for turning it in.