Visible Light Communication by Using LED Array for Automatic Wheelchair Control in Hospitals

2021

IEEE Access

Self Cite

The shortage of medical personnel is now a problem and is expected to worsen in the future. Meanwhile, in the case of infectious diseases such as new coronavirus infections, it is very important that nurses and other medical staff treat patients as remotely as possible, which helps to prevent nosocomial infections and is also important for maintaining the medical system. One way to address these issues is to use mobile robots as assistants to automate the transport of patients and supplies. Wireless communication is necessary to control such robots remotely, but doing so with radio waves is undesirable in the medical field because of the impact on patients and medical equipment. Therefore, this paper proposes a teleoperation system for a wheeled mobile robot using visible light with a camera and an array of LEDs, an approach that affects neither patients nor medical equipment. This paper presents the development of visible light communication for this system by introducing a novel blinking pattern for the receiver and novel light-weight algorithm for the transmitter. According to a wide range of experiments, the proposed teleoperation system performs well enough for the remote control of wheeled robots in hospitals.

“…These results were obtained both with and without Gaussian weighting. Here, the conventional method is that without Gaussian weighting [41]. As shown in Figs.…”

Section: B Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote Control of a Wheeled Robot by Visible Light for Support in Infectious Disease Hospitals

Tsunoda

2021

IEEE Access

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“…ECENT improvements in image processing techniques have advanced research on object detection and classification, and we have been engaged in extensive research in that field [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. In these studies, a camera photographs an object and image processing is performed to obtain information about that object.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Hybrid Camera System for High-Resolutionization of Target Objects in Omnidirectional Images

Tamaki

2021

IEEE Sensors J.

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Recent improvements in cameras and image processing techniques have advanced research on object detection and classification. The cameras capable of capturing omnidirectional images are advantageous for detecting surrounding objects, we focus on their usage method. Omnidirectional camera images generally have lower resolution than available cameras, leading to difficulty in identifying objects farther from the camera. To address this problem, we propose a hybrid camera system that first detects indistinct target regions during omnidirectional viewing, then uses a pan-tilt camera to capture a high-resolution image of the target. We also propose an algorithm for reducing the number of required complementary shots to realize efficient shooting.

“…With the evolution of computers and related technologies, several studies have been conducted on robots that can perform tasks deemed too risky or difficult for humans. To that end, the focus has been on developing wheeled robots [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ], flying robots [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ], and snakelike robots [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Many recent studies focus on developing not only robots that perform risky or difficult tasks for humans, but also production robots in workplaces that face labor shortages [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ], cleaning robots to support housework to meet the demands of our busy lives [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ], and robots to support the medical sector.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomous Spiral Motion by a Small-Type Robot on an Obstacle-Available Surface

Tokunaga

et al. 2021

Micromachines

Self Cite

Several robot-related studies have been conducted in recent years; however, studies on the autonomous travel of small mobile robots in small spaces are lacking. In this study, we investigate the development of autonomous travel for small robots that need to travel and cover the entire smooth surface, such as those employed for cleaning tables or solar panels. We consider an obstacle-available surface and target this travel on it by proposing a spiral motion method. To achieve the spiral motion, we focus on developing autonomous avoidance of obstacles, return to original path, and fall prevention when robots traverse a surface. The development of regular travel by a robot without an encoder is an important feature of this study. The traveled distance was measured using the traveling time. We achieved spiral motion by analyzing the data from multiple small sensors installed on the robot by introducing a new attitude-control method, and we ensured that the robot returned to the original spiral path autonomously after avoiding obstacles and without falling over the edge of the surface.