Integrated Autonomous Mobile Robotic System For Vital Signs Surveillance And Automated Pharmacy Services In Healthcare Facilities

Abstract

Autonomous mobile humanoid robots represent the transformative solution to healthcare's dual crises of nursing shortages and infection control demands. This paper presents an integrated autonomous mobile robotic system for vital signs surveillance and automated healthcare assistance in smart hospital environments. Unlike existing healthcare robotic solutions that primarily focus on isolated functionalities such as navigation, physiological sensing, or communication, the proposed framework combines autonomous navigation, RFID-based patient identification, physiological monitoring, real-time healthcare communication, emergency alert generation, and electronic health record (EHR) synchronization within a unified Robot Operating System (ROS)-based architecture. The proposed system incorporates a Raspberry Pi 4 and Arduino Mega control architecture integrated with LiDAR, IMU, RFID, temperature, and pulse oximetry sensors to enable autonomous patient localization, identification, and contactless acquisition of body temperature, heart rate, and oxygen saturation (SpO₂). Autonomous navigation is achieved through SLAM, sensor fusion, and ROS navigation frameworks, while wireless communication enables real-time transmission of healthcare information to a centralized monitoring server. An intelligent alert generation mechanism continuously evaluates physiological measurements against predefined clinical thresholds and automatically notifies healthcare personnel when abnormal conditions are detected. The obtained results validate the effectiveness of the proposed system for intelligent patient surveillance, continuous remote healthcare monitoring, and rapid clinical decision support, thereby contributing toward safer, more efficient, and human-centered smart healthcare environments.