Design and simulation of a laboratory with cobots: Collaborative laboratory design

Abstract

Nowadays, we are entering into the data era. Day to day more devices work with sensors, data, and intelligent systems. All this technology wants to make our lives more comfortable providing us with innovative tools. This project, entitled Design and simulation of a laboratory with cobots, is focused on starting the path to a collaborative clinic laboratory. It has been noticed that in this environment, high-qualified personal spends a lot of their time into very repetitive and valueless tasks, such as change samples rack, or more precise skills as pipetting. Its implementation could involve a huge increase in sample testing speed. Today more than ever, due to the COVID-19 crisis, have been demonstrated that this productivity could be a bottleneck process on healthcare. This means that the number of treated patients is directly correlated with testing speed. This study is based on three interconnected branches. The design of a new lab mapping method, the implementation of a pipetting task on a cobot, and the development of software that schedules lab tasks, and communicates with the robots/staff. By the development of these three tools, it is expected an approach to understand such a chaotic environment, locate the optimal tasks, and implement them. Reaching those goals will imply an approach on the implementation of cobots in clinical laboratories a more realistic trend.