Design and Implementation of a Wheeled Robot with Obstacle Avoidance and Navigation Capabilities for Drug Delivery

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-986-5_36How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Wheeled-legged robot; Obstacle avoidance; Medical delivery; Multi-sensor fusion; Path planning

Abstract

In medical settings, wheeled robots with obstacle avoidance and navigation capabilities have become a key enabler for automated precision delivery, effectively addressing the need for efficient medical logistics and reducing the workload of nursing staff. However, significant technical challenges persist in this field like obstacle misdetection rates reach 18% under complex lighting conditions, hindering safe navigation, resolving path conflicts among multiple robots takes an average of 4.2 seconds, impacting collaborative efficiency and insufficient elderly-friendly interaction design results in a 21% error rate among elderly users. These limitations collectively restrict the widespread adoption of robotic solutions in dynamic medical environments. To address these challenges, this study proposes a novel wheel-leg hybrid mechanism that combines the mobility of wheeled movement with the terrain adaptability of legged systems. It integrates multi-modal sensor fusion technology, including lidar, ultrasonic sensors, and visual cameras, to achieve high-precision environmental perception. For path planning, it employs a strategy combining the optimized A* algorithm with the dynamic window method, supporting real-time global path optimization and local obstacle avoidance. The integrated system aims to demonstrate significant performance improvements including enhancing obstacle recognition accuracy, controlling path re-planning latency, decreasing the proportion of nurses’ non-clinical work time and increasing delivery efficiency, expanding application scenarios to multi-story hospital environments and outdoor communities. The paper will mainly address key limitations in the field of medical robotics through a systematic approach, providing a robust technical framework to drive the development of automated medical delivery systems toward higher reliability and usability.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhenghao Yu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/18
TI  - Design and Implementation of a Wheeled Robot with Obstacle Avoidance and Navigation Capabilities for Drug Delivery
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Electronics, Electrical and Grid Technology (ICEEGT 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 334
EP  - 350
SN  - 2352-5401
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-986-5_36
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-986-5_36
ID  - Yu2026
ER  -