A method for collision free navigation of a robotic hospital bed among steady and moving obstacles

We present a reactive navigation algorithm which ensures the safety of the hospital beds in the dynamic environments. The proposed navigation algorithm allows the hospital beds to avoid en-route obstacles with an efficient easy-to-compute sliding mode obstacle avoidance strategy when an obstacle is nearby, and move towards the target location at maximum speed when there is no threat of collision. We provide extensive computer simulation of the proposed navigation algorithm. More importantly, the experiment results with the designed mobile hospital bed in real world scenarios are also presented.