IIT Ropar develops WardBot to deliver food, medicine to COVID-19 patients

The Indian Institute of Technology Ropar has announced that a team of researchers at the campus has developed a 'WardBot' to deliver medicine and food to coronavirus, to reduce any human interaction.

A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar has developed an autonomous 'WardBot' to deliver medicines and food to coronavirus patients living in isolation wards, without any human intervention. 

If deployed in hospitals, this WardBot can help in reducing the risk of the frontline health staff getting infected with the deadly virus. Based on the smart line following, WardBot, fitted with sensors, can work on a known path and can carry food items and medicines for delivery at different beds to patients in isolation wards, said Ekta Singla, Associate Professor, and Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Ropar.

The WardBot has a sensor that responds if a quarantined person waves a bye to the bot, as an indication of receiving the material. Patients will get the intimation through bed-IDs being displayed on small LCD units, she said.

It has been designed in a way that it can be instructed to receive and deliver food, medicines and necessary equipment from one room to the other from the remotely located control room, the researchers said.

The control room can instruct multiple bots to accomplish tasks simultaneously on different floors, they said.

It also has a special feature of self-sanitizing on the return path and can be used to sanitize walls of hospitals, said the researchers, adding that it can also work in low-light conditions. 

This WardBot can help to keep the healthcare workers safe while attending the coronavirus positive patients, the team said. 

Earlier, IIT Ropar had developed a design of the Negative Pressure Room, to avoid the spread of COVID-19 through the air among the health staff working in isolation wards and testing labs.

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