E04: Delivery of Emergency Medicines

This episode will be part of the 2021 competition. For a detailed and up to date description please refer to the official rule book (to be released in April).

General Description.

Delivery of medicines to isolated persons and accompany to medical centre. A medicine is ordered by a person in Bologna that cannot go out (due to quarantine related issues or because the person is disabled). The robot must be able to move autonomously to the location where the citizen is waiting. The robot might need to detect and avoid possible obstacles on the way (static and dynamic), and it must consider that GPS coverage is not always guaranteed. Once the robot arrives to the citizen, the robot should interact with him (in English) to deliver the proper medicine and inform about the needed dosage. Depending on the person health, it could be also possible that the robot should accompany the person to the nearest medical centre to see a doctor.

Platforms Allowed.

Ground robots that can carry items to specific locations, navigate in outdoor (and maybe indoor spaces), detect and avoid of obstacles (dynamic and static), have incorporated basic human-robot interaction with the citizen. Specific limitations may be applied to large ground robots for safety reasons. Apart from this, any ground robot platform will be able to enter the competition for this episode.

Set up.

The episode must take place in an urban area of Bologna. Within this urban area there should be two identified locations: medical centre (starting point of the robot) and the location where the medicine has to be delivered (where the citizen is). Also, fixed (and mobile) obstacles could be included within this area. Depending on the specific area, dead ends and indoor spaces could be used to incorporate more realism to the episode.

Procedure.

According to the given description the procedure is split in two parts.
Task 1 (Delivery of medicine): a medicine request reaches a pharmacy in downtown Bologna. The responsible of the pharmacy provides attaches the medicine to the ground robot. The robot goes with the medicine towards the location, detecting and avoiding different obstacles on the way (including other pedestrians). Once at the location, it must enter through an opening (size TBD), detect the person, stop nearby (accuracy requirement TBD) and interact with the person to confirm his/her identity, deliver the proper medicine and inform about the required dosage. There will be an increasing level of difficulty in the types and number of obstacles that the robot can encounter.

Task 2 (Accompany to medical centre): In case the person does not feel well and it is not enough with the medicine, the robot should ask the citizen to accompany him/her to the nearest medical centre. Then, the robot will accompany, side by side, the citizen until they arrive to the medical centre, overcoming dynamic and static obstacles on the way. There will be an increasing level of difficulty in the types and number of obstacles that the robot can encounter.

The challenge will run on 3 days, 2 days of preliminaries and one day of finals. The number of runs for both tasks in each day will be defined based on the number of participating teams.