Study on a practical robotic follower to support home oxygen therapy patients-development and control of a mobile platform

Home oxygen therapy (HOT) is a medical treatment for patients suffering from severe lung diseases. Although walking outdoors is recommended for patients to maintain physical strength, patients always have to carry a portable oxygen supplier which is not sufficiently light weight for this purpose. Our ultimate goal is to develop a mobile robot to carry an oxygen tank and follow a patient in an urban outdoor environment. We have proposed a mobile robot with a tether interface to detect the relative position of the foregoing patient. In this paper, we improve mobile platform mechanisms and active wheels to maximize the step height which can be negotiated, and to allocate sufficient space in the main body to carry an actual oxygen tank. The following control algorithm is also improved and its effectiveness is demonstrated in an outdoor experiment.