Personal Project (Jun 2020-Aug 2020)
- When the pandemic initially hit, a group of friends and I realized the immense risk that health care professionals were under. We reached out to a doctor in Kodagu Institute of Medical Sciences, and partnered with him to create a robot that can serve food, and drinks as well as provide tele-medicine services to patients in the COVID-19 isolation ward. We called this robot “MedBot”, with the primary aim of providing telepresence to critical care workers.
- This entire project from conception to deployment in the ward took place in a span of a couple of months. This was especially challenging because during the peak of the pandemic induced lock-downs, the entire supply chain was disrupted and sourcing even basic components to make the robot was challenging.
- It was an immense learning experience as we learned what it takes to convert something you design from a project to a product that can be used by people. This involves anticipating the various ways the product can fail and creating engineering solutions to overcome these solutions. It also involves carrying out validation and acceptance testing to ensure that the project meets the users’ needs.
- The initial prototype that was operational at the hospital was a simple line-follow robot to minimize the complexity of the system and also due to the limited budget, time and resources at the time. The following video demonstrates how this works:
- From the feedback from doctors, we decided to make the next prototype of this robot WiFi controlled, and also upgraded the mechanical build of the robot to make it more durable and robust. The following video summarizes all of its basic features: