MedBot
MedBot
This project has a robot read a schedule that is entered by the user in a user-friendly schedule on cloud-based website called AirTable, and acts accordingly to help deliver medication to the user.
Matthew
The premise of this project is to help people who regularly take medication (most ideal is pills) with a robot. The user enters the name of the medication they will be taking along with the scheduled time for that, and the robot then checks to see if the time it is run is within 30 mins of the scheduled medicine time. The robot then acts accordingly with the user. If it falls within the desired 30 min time frame, it opens the lid with user interaction. To open, you put your finger in front of the “finger sensor”, and when you are done, you press the button in the front of the robot. The future plans for the robot are to be able to register the user’s name without hard coding, and have more sturdy materials than cardboard used.
Hi! Awesome idea- definitely a real problem to solve! I’ve actually seen something like this called Pillsy (https://www.pillsy.com/) that started up pretty recently and started to sell- so that’s awesome validation that the problem you are solving is not only real, but one that people are genuinely interested in investing in to solve!
Have you considered UI for your specific users? I can imagine that a lot of the potential users would be elderly, which is also the age group least comfortable with technology. How did you keep this in mind when designing your UI and setup?
Hello! Thank you for the comment, you definitely make a good point. I wasn’t too sure how to make a very basic UI that interacts with the targeted age group, being elderly people, but I have it on my to-do list when I continue to advance the robot’s development. I did think reading out the instructions through the speaker would help older people more than text appearing on a screen, and I was thinking of making some labels for the buttons/sensors that clearly marked their purpose. The reason why I couldn’t meet that label idea in time was due to time constraint. I definitely think incorporating a small touchscreen on the robot (with easy-to-use UI) and covering up the robot’s technical parts will make the robot much less confusing to use. You definitely addressed the weakest point of my project, thank you for the feedback.
Those all sound like good ideas! Great work on your project.
this is really cool. I like how you enter out which times to give the medicine.
Nice work! I like that it reminds you if you have already taken your medication that day – you don’t even need to be elderly, I honestly sometimes am distracted in the morning and can’t remember if I had my multivitamin or not so this would definitely help me! It would be neat if it also would tell you / remind you (like an alarm clock) in case you are too busy to press the button to check. Do you think that would be a difficult feature to add? Do you think it would be possible for the robot to actually detect which pills you took when it opened (in case you had multiple medicines) – if so, which sensors would you use?
No, I think I should be able to easily incorporate the alarm clock-like function. Seeing what medicine is taken would be possible with the camera, I think. I do think that would be a more difficult task. I also think dividing up the tray into sections for each medicine and labeling those would help the robot with easily distinguishing medicine with the robot. Maybe a light that shines over the medicine would help the camera out a bit more, so darkness wouldn’t be an issue. Thanks Jenn!
Where is it getting the time and date from?
The current time and date are retrieved from a default python module called daytime. The scheduled date and time for the medications are retrieved from the AirTable using their API, performing a get request.
This is really well designed and it has a lot of useful applications! Well done!
Very cool idea. I think it is a great solution for people with certain disabilities.
I like how you included a flap to prevent the user from just taking the medication. I also appreciate how you included both examples in your video.
Love the idea. I feel it would be extremely useful to people who have loads of trouble forgetting to take their medication. I’d love to see how you would progress with this idea to make it even more helpful for people. Do you have any plans to move forward?
I do! This was actually very fun to develop. I have a few ideas. I’m thinking about replacing the cardboard materials with somethings like thick plastic, most likely 3D printed. I also think incorporating more sensors, giving the robot some drive-ability so it can approach you better. Also thinking about incorporating more checks, like seeing if you have already taken the medication for that day. For example, if you are within the correct time frame but have already taken the medication, the robot takes note of that. Thanks Hadi.
This is a really cool and interesting idea. It provides a nice simple interface, and it could actually help people in real life.
–Ian
This is a really helpful creation for people who take a lot of medicine and/or forget a lot. I think if you added mobility to this robot, it could be even more powerful by finding patients. Great job!
I think this is an amazing idea and definitely well executed. This solves a lot of problems elderly may have with forgetting what time it is and whether or not they took the medicine or not
As Emma said above, this concept is super cool and is actually a concept that is currently being researched today. This project can defintely be incorporated in so many aspects, such as nursing homes. I really liked that you used Airtable; it’s super user friendly so I imagine caregivers would have an easy time inputting the needed information for their users. I hope you continue this project one way or another!
Thank you. I appreciate the kinds words!