Disclosure of Invention
The technical problem to be solved by the invention comprises providing a medicine bottle grabbing system and a medicine bottle grabbing method, wherein the medicine bottle grabbing system and the medicine bottle grabbing method can automatically obtain required medicines and effectively control the medicine taking error rate.
In order to solve at least part of the technical problems, the invention provides a medicine bottle grabbing system which comprises a medicine cabinet, a medicine taking mechanical arm, a label reader and a controller, wherein the label reader and the controller are arranged on the medicine taking mechanical arm;
the drug cabinet comprises a drug bottle clamp, the drug bottle clamp is configured to accommodate at least one drug bottle and enable the drug bottle to be concentrated at a first end of the drug bottle clamp, and a label is arranged at the first end of the drug bottle clamp;
the controller is configured to:
controlling the medicine taking manipulator to move to the medicine bottle clamp according to the medicine taking instruction;
controlling the tag reader to read the tag;
determining that the label corresponds to the medication taking instruction;
the medicine taking manipulator is controlled to grab the medicine bottle positioned at the first end.
According to at least one embodiment of the present invention, the medicine dispensing manipulator includes an arm portion and a hand portion provided on the arm portion;
the controller is configured to:
controlling the arm to move to the medicine bottle clamp according to the medicine taking instruction;
the hand is controlled to grab the medicine bottle at the first end.
According to at least one embodiment of the invention, the tag reader is disposed at a side of the arm portion;
the controller is configured to:
when the arm is controlled to move to the medicine bottle clamp according to the medicine taking instruction, the label reader is aligned to the label.
According to at least one embodiment of the invention, the fetching instructions include movement instructions and vial information;
the controller is configured to:
controlling the arm to move to the medicine bottle clamp according to the moving instruction;
and judging whether the label corresponds to the medicine bottle information or not.
According to at least one embodiment of the present invention, the vial holder has a plurality of advancement slots, and the hand has a vial sensor disposed thereon;
the controller is configured to:
controlling the medicine bottle sensor to detect whether the hand grabs the medicine bottle;
should control this medicine taking manipulator and snatch a plurality of these propulsion grooves in proper order, grab the medicine bottle for this hand until this medicine bottle sensor detects.
According to at least one embodiment of the invention, the hand portion comprises two grabbers configured to move towards each other, the hand portion being configured to extend outwardly from the arm portion;
the controller is configured to:
controlling the hand to extend from the arm to the vial clip to at least a portion of the grasping member into the vial clip;
the two grabbing pieces are controlled to move towards each other to grab the medicine bottle.
According to at least one embodiment of the invention, the drug cabinet comprises a plurality of drug vial clips, each drug vial clip configured to receive a same type of drug vial;
the vial clip comprises a vial retaining device having a height corresponding to a height of a vial received by the vial clip, the vial retaining device covering a location of a second vial 301 located from the first end;
when the medicine taking manipulator grabs the medicine bottle, the medicine bottle is separated from the medicine bottle clamp in an upward moving mode.
At least a part of technical problems of the present invention are not solved, and the present invention also provides a vial gripping method, comprising:
obtaining a medicine taking instruction;
moving the medicine taking manipulator to the medicine bottle clamp according to the medicine taking instruction;
reading the label on the medicine bottle clamp by using a label reader on the medicine taking manipulator;
determining that the content of the label corresponds to the instruction to take the medicine;
the medicine bottle in the medicine bottle clamp is grabbed by the medicine taking manipulator.
According to at least one embodiment of the present invention, the vial holder has a plurality of advancement slots;
when the mechanical arm grabs the medicine bottles in the medicine bottle clamp, the pushing grooves are sequentially grabbed until the medicine bottles are grabbed.
According to at least one embodiment of the invention, a vial sensor is provided on the robot;
the vial sensor is configured to detect whether the arm grabs a vial.
According to the medicine bottle gripping system and the medicine bottle gripping method, the label on the medicine bottle clamp is read before the medicine bottle is gripped, and whether the label corresponds to the medicine taking instruction or not is judged, so that automatic medicine taking can be completed, and the error rate of medicine taking can be effectively controlled.
Detailed Description
In order to make the aforementioned objects, features and advantages of the present invention comprehensible, embodiments accompanied with figures are described in detail below.
In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention, but the present invention may be practiced in other ways than those specifically described herein, and thus the present invention is not limited to the specific embodiments disclosed below.
Certain terms are used throughout the description and claims to refer to particular system components. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, different companies may refer to a component by different names. This document does not intend to distinguish between components that differ in name but not function. In the description and claims, the terms "include" and "comprise" are used in an open-ended fashion, and thus should be interpreted to mean "include, but not limited to …".
As used in this application and the appended claims, the terms "a," "an," "the," and/or "the" are not intended to be inclusive in the singular, but rather are intended to be inclusive in the plural unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. In general, the terms "comprises" and "comprising" merely indicate that steps and elements are included which are explicitly identified, that the steps and elements do not form an exclusive list, and that a method or apparatus may include other steps or elements.
Furthermore, each of the embodiments described below has one or more technical features, and thus, the use of the technical features of any one embodiment does not necessarily mean that all of the technical features of any one embodiment are implemented at the same time or that only some or all of the technical features of different embodiments are implemented separately. In other words, those skilled in the art can selectively implement some or all of the features of any embodiment or combinations of some or all of the features of multiple embodiments according to the disclosure of the present invention and according to design specifications or implementation requirements, thereby increasing the flexibility in implementing the invention.
One embodiment of the vial gripping system and the vial gripping method of the present invention will be described below with reference to fig. 1 and 3. In the present embodiment, the vial gripping system includes a drug cabinet 100, a drug-taking robot 200, a tag reader 220 disposed on the drug-taking robot, and a controller. The drug cabinet 100 includes one or more drug vial clips 110. Referring to fig. 1 in the current embodiment, the drug cabinet 100 includes 5 tiers of 3 vial clips 110. Each of the medicine bottle holders 110 is capable of receiving at least one medicine bottle 300 and concentrating the received medicine bottles at one end thereof so that the medicine taking robot 200 can grasp the medicine bottles more conveniently. For ease of reference, this end of the vial set will be referred to hereinafter as first end 111. The vial holder 110, in addition to having the above-described structure, is provided with a label 112 at its first end 111. The content on the label 112 can reflect the type of the medicine bottle 300 contained in the medicine bottle holder 110. It is noted that the content on label 112 may have various forms, such as a drug number of drug vial 300, a drug vial name, a bar code, or a two-dimensional code, for example.
The controller is connected to both the medicine taking robot 200 and the tag reader 220, and can control the medicine taking robot 200 and the tag reader 220. The specific location and form of the controller may vary, and the manner in which the controller is connected to the applicator robot 200 and the tag reader 220 may also vary. The controller may be disposed inside the device shown in fig. 1 to 3, or may be disposed outside thereof, and thus is not shown in fig. 1 to 3.
The controller may implement the method of fetching by controlling the fetch robot 200 and the tag reader 220. An example of such a medication taking method is described below with reference to fig. 4:
in step 10, the controller obtains a medication fetch instruction. The specific manner in which the fetching instructions are obtained may vary. For example, the order may be entered by a user, such as a doctor or nurse, via an input device of the vial gripping system. For another example, the controller is connected to a network and the fetching instructions are obtained by the controller from the network.
It is noted that the above step 10 is described first and does not mean that the step 10 is necessarily the first step. Referring to fig. 4, in some embodiments, a "start" step may also be performed before performing this step 10. In this "start" step, system self-checks, connection to the network and connection quality checks, etc. may be performed.
In step 20, the controller controls the medicine dispensing robot 200 to move to the medicine bottle clamp 110 corresponding to the medicine dispensing command according to the medicine dispensing command. The specific manner of this step may also be varied. For example, in some embodiments, the fetching instructions include movement instructions that correspond to the location of a particular vial clip 110. Therefore, when the controller moves the medicine dispensing robot 200 to a position corresponding to the movement command according to the movement command, the position corresponds to the medicine dispensing command and also corresponds to the specific medicine bottle holder 110.
In other embodiments, the fetch instructions include only drug information. After obtaining the medicine information, the controller queries a database storing the medicine information and the corresponding medicine cabinet position according to the medicine information, thereby obtaining the position information of the medicine bottle clamp 110 corresponding to the medicine taking instruction. In this embodiment, the controller moves the medicine dispensing robot 200 to a position corresponding to the position information according to the position information. This position is the position corresponding to the prescription order and also corresponds to the corresponding vial holder 110.
In step 30, the controller controls the tag reader 220 to read the tag 112 located on the first end 111 of the vial clip 110. The specific form of the tag reader 220 may be varied, and in some embodiments, the tag reader 220 is a camera and is capable of photographing the tag 112. In other embodiments, the tag reader 220 is a Radio Frequency antenna, the tag 112 is a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag, and the tag reader 220 is capable of sending rf signals to read the tag 112.
In step 40, the controller determines whether the read tag 112 corresponds to a medication dispensing instruction. If the judgment result is that the medicine is corresponding to the first medicine, the subsequent medicine taking steps can be continued. To accomplish this determination, vial information may be included in the prescription, which may be in the same or different form than the information on label 112.
Note that, if it is determined in this step that the tag 112 does not correspond to the medicine dispensing instruction, the corresponding processing may be performed. Referring to FIG. 4, in some embodiments, upon determining that tag 112 does not correspond to a drug fetch instruction, a prompt step is skipped to prompt the user.
In step 50, the controller controls the drug-taking robot 200 to grasp the drug vial 300 located at the first end 111 of the drug vial holder 110.
According to the medicine bottle grabbing system and the medicine bottle grabbing method, before grabbing the medicine bottle, the label on the medicine bottle clamp is read, whether the label corresponds to the medicine taking instruction is judged, and the medicine taking step is only carried out when the read label corresponds to the medicine taking instruction, so that not only can automatic medicine taking be completed, but also the error rate of medicine taking can be effectively controlled.
Although the vial gripping system and method of one embodiment of the present invention are described above, in other embodiments of the present invention, the vial gripping system and method may have further details and at least some of these details may be varied widely in many ways with respect to the embodiments described above. For example, in some embodiments the user is alerted audibly in the alerting step, and in other embodiments the user is alerted by sending a reminder message to a user connected to the vial grasping system. At least some of these details and variations are described below in several embodiments.
Referring to fig. 2 and 3, in some embodiments, the drug-fetching robot 200 further includes an arm portion 210 and a hand portion 230. Wherein the hand 230 is disposed on the arm 210. In these embodiments, when the controller moves the medicine taking robot 200 according to the medicine taking instruction, for example, when the medicine taking robot 200 is controlled to move to the medicine bottle clamp 110 corresponding to the medicine taking instruction in step 20 according to the medicine taking instruction, the controller controls the arm 210 to move according to the medicine taking instruction or the movement instruction in the medicine taking instruction until the arm 210 moves to correspond to the specific medicine bottle clamp 110.
Accordingly, when the controller controls the medicine taking robot 200 to take the grasp, for example, the controller controls the medicine taking robot 200 to grasp the medicine bottle 300 located at the first end 111 of the medicine bottle clamp 110 in step 50, the control hand 230 grasps the medicine bottle 300 located at the first end 111.
With continued reference to fig. 2 and 3, in some embodiments, the tag reader 220 is disposed on a side of the arm 210. Accordingly, to enable the tag reader 220 to read the tag more smoothly, the controller moves the arm 210 to a position where the tag reader 220 is aligned with the tag 112 on the first end 111 of the vial holder 110 when the arm 210 is controlled to move according to the dispensing command.
With continued reference to fig. 2 and 3, in some embodiments, the vial clip 110 has a plurality of advancement slots 114. Each propulsion slot 114 has propulsion structure therein. The pushing structures are used to push the vials 300 in each pushing slot 114 toward the first end 111 of the vial clip 110. A vial sensor 240 is provided on the hand 230 of the drug dispensing robot 200. The vial sensor 240 is coupled to the controller and is capable of detecting whether the hand 230 has grasped the vial 300 under the control of the controller.
This arrangement enables the controller to control the medicine taking robot 200 to sequentially grip the plurality of pusher grooves 114 while controlling the medicine taking robot 200 to grip the medicine, and to control the medicine bottle sensor 240 to continuously or intermittently detect whether the hand 230 grips the medicine bottle. When vial sensor 240 detects that hand 230 has grasped vial 300, then continued grasping of other advancement slots 114 may be stopped. This arrangement allows the drug-taking robot 200 to grasp a vial when there is a vial in any one of the advancement slots 114, thus allowing the quasi-drug vial holder 110 to be provided with multiple advancement slots 114 and without maintaining a constant presence of a vial in those advancement slots 114.
The benefits of providing multiple advancement grooves 114 are manifold, and on the one hand, providing multiple advancement grooves 114 can greatly increase the capacity of a single vial clip 110 while maintaining a simpler overall configuration of the vial clip 110. On the other hand, the plurality of pushing slots 114 may be provided so that the user does not interfere with the picking robot 200 to pick the vials in the other pushing slots 114 when the user performs the operation of refilling some pushing slots 114 with vials.
In the foregoing example, the sensor 240 has been described as being connected to the controller and capable of detecting whether the hand 230 has grasped the vial 300 under the control of the controller. This is because the specific type of sensor 240 and the specific manner of detecting whether the hand 230 has grasped the vial 300 may vary. In some embodiments, the sensor 240 is capable of detecting pressure on the surface of the hand 230. When the hand grasps the vial 300, the sensor 240 detects the pressure rise on the surface of the hand 230 and transmits the detection result to the controller, at which time the controller can know that the hand 230 has grasped the vial 300. Referring to FIG. 3, in some other embodiments, the sensor 240 is a light sensor and is capable of detecting the intensity of light at the center of the hand 230. The intensity of light in the center of the hand 230 changes when the hand grasps the vial 300. The sensor 240 can detect such a change, thereby causing the controller to know that the hand 230 has grasped the vial 300.
The hand 230 has only been described as being able to grasp the vial 300 at the first end 111 in the foregoing example because the specific form of the hand 230 may vary. For example, in some embodiments the hand portion 230 includes a tray and a catch. The catch is capable of hooking and dragging the vial 300 over the tray. Referring to fig. 3, in some embodiments, the hand 230 includes two grips 231. The two gripping members 231 are separated from each other and can be moved towards each other. The hand portion 230 can also extend outwardly from the arm portion 210.
The arrangement is such that the controller causes the control hand 230 to extend outwardly from the arm 210 when the control hand 230 is grasping, for example, when the drug-taking robot 200 is controlled to grasp a drug vial 300 at the first end 111 of the vial holder 110 in step 50. Such extension may cause the gripping member 231 to at least partially enter the interior of the vial clip 110, since the arm 210 has now moved to a position corresponding to the vial clip 110.
After the gripping members 231 have at least partially entered the interior of the vial holder 110, the controller may effect gripping of the vial 300 by controlling the two gripping members 231 to move towards each other such that the two gripping members 231 grip the vial 300 located in the vial holder 110.
Referring to fig. 2 and 5, in some embodiments, the drug cabinet 100 includes a plurality of drug vial clips 110 and each drug vial clip 110 is used to house a same type of drug vial containing the same drug. The vial clip 110 is also provided with a vial retaining device 115. The height of the vial holder 115 is set to correspond to the height of the vial 300 received by the vial clip 110. The vial holder 115 can cover the location of the second vial 301 from the first end of the vial clip 110. In other words, if a plurality of vials are disposed in the vial holder 110, the vial holder 115 covers the second vial 301 from the first end in the vial holder 110.
In this embodiment, the drug-taking robot 200, after grasping the drug vial 300, disengages the grasped drug vial 300 from the drug vial holder 110 in an upward movement. Since the drug-taking robot 200 is generally designed to be able to grasp a variety of vials having different sizes. It is therefore possible to grasp a second vial 301 from the first end at the same time when grasping some smaller size vials. The vial holder 115 may be configured to block a second vial 301 when the drug dispensing robot 200 is grasping two vials and moving upward by providing the vial holder 115 and causing the drug dispensing robot 200 to grasp the vials in an upward motion. The blocked second vial 301 will not move upwardly with the dispensing robot 200 and will be disengaged from the dispensing robot 200 and remain in the vial holder 110. Such an arrangement can therefore ensure that the drug-taking robot 200 only grasps one vial at a time.
The specific form of the vial holder 115 may vary. In some embodiments, the holder body 120 of the vial holder 115 is disposed in a horizontal manner above the location of the vial clip 110 from the first end to the second vial, serving to block upward movement of the second vial 301. The vial holder 115 further includes holder side plates 116 vertically disposed at both ends of the holder body 120. The vial holder 115 is disposed on the vial clip 110 in such a manner that the holder side plate 116 is fixed to the clip side plate 118 of the vial clip 110.
The specific manner of securing the retainer side plate 116 to the clip side plate 118 of the vial clip 110 may vary. In some embodiments, the retainer side plate 116 is movably secured to the clip side plate 118 of the vial clip 110 in order to enable the vial clip 110 to fit a variety of different sized vials. Specifically, the holder side plate 116 is provided with a plurality of holder positioning holes 117. The cartridge clip side plate 118 is also correspondingly provided with a cartridge clip positioning hole. The locating pegs 119 secure the retainer locating holes 117 and the cartridge retaining holes together. This arrangement allows the user to adjust the height of the holder body 120 by securing the cartridge clip locating holes with different holder locating holes 117, thereby allowing the vial clip 110 to fit a variety of different sizes of vials.
Optionally, in some embodiments, the positioning pin 119 is made of a resilient material so that the pressure between the cap body 120 and the second vial 301 is not excessive when the cap body is stopped. In some embodiments, the clip side plate 118 further has a groove for the retainer side plate 116 to slide, and the clip positioning hole is disposed in the groove.
While the invention has been described with reference to a number of specific embodiments, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that the foregoing embodiments are merely illustrative of the invention, and various changes in and substitutions of equivalents may be made without departing from the spirit of the invention. Therefore, changes and modifications to the above-described embodiments within the spirit and scope of the present invention will fall within the scope of the claims of the present application.