An Autonomous Delivery Robot to Prevent the Spread of Coronavirus in Product Delivery System

Due to the coronavirus situation around the world, safe and contactless home delivery services have become substantial concerns for the people while they are forced to stay at home. In this context, we have proposed a prototype robot that can be very helpful to reduce the risk of infectious disease transmission in the product delivery system during the extreme strain on healthcare and hygiene. The design and development of a cost effective autonomous mobile robot prototype have been presented that can deliver packages safely to a desired destination using Global Positioning System (GPS). The robot ensures a secure and human-contactless delivery by using a password protected container to carry the delivery package. The four wheel drive robot can successfully navigate to a preset location by receiving GPS coordinates from satellites and correcting its direction using a digital compass. After the robot arrives at its destination, it waits for the customer to unlock the container. The customer will have to use a password upon delivery to unlock the container and retrieve the ordered product. This password can be sent to the customer with the order confirmation message. After completing the delivery, the robot can autonomously return to its starting location. Heading angle accuracy test and trajectory completion accuracy test have been performed to ascertain the accuracy of the robot. Alongside an infection risk-free product delivery, our robot can be an effective technological solution of the last mile problem which will reduce the last mile delivery cost significantly.