The use of robots in industrial logistics has been relatively well established for years. Governed by a suitable management system, they are capable of moving and handling materials between different parts of an industrial plant or warehouse. However, the reality is quite different when robots operate in non-industrial buildings, such as hospitals, hotels or shopping malls.

“In these types of buildings,” explains Raúl Poler, director of CIGIP-UPV and professor at the Alcoy UPV campus, “we find features that do not normally appear in industries. For example, in an industrial building, the routes taken by workers and robots are perfectly delimited and there is hardly any interference between them. However, in hospitals, hotels, shopping malls or offices, the number of people circulating is substantially higher and, normally, with very different movement patterns”.

In addition, there may be furniture or other elements that change place every day, for example, stretchers in the corridors of a hospital, and this makes it difficult for the robot to move around. In addition, these are environments with a high degree of technological heterogeneity. In this sense, Eduardo Guzmán, postdoctoral researcher at CIGIP-UPV, invites us to imagine “a shopping mall, with dozens of stores, each with different systems and communication devices, which in turn interact with the systems that manage the robots and the robots themselves.”

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