Pathfinder-Development of Automated Guided Vehicle for Hospital Logistics

This paper describes the development of Pathfinder-an autonomous guided vehicle intended for the transportation of material in hospital environments. Pathfinder is equipped with the latest industrial hardware components and employs the most recent software stacks for simultaneous localization, navigation, and mapping. As the most significant contribution to the current robotics development, powerlink interface enabling direct data transfers between robot operating system and powerlink compatible hardware was developed. This combination is in our best knowledge reported here for the first time and the results with comprehensive tutorial were made publicly available as a GitHub repository. The capabilities of Pathfinder were explored during preliminary on-site tests in local hospital. From experimental results in a hospital it was confirmed that the robot can move along its global path, and reach the goal without colliding with static and moving objects.