Mobile correctional facility robots
AssigneeGlobal Tel*Link Corporation
InventorStephen Hodge
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present disclosure is directed to mobile correctional facility robots and systems and methods for coordinating mobile correctional facility robots to perform various tasks in a correctional facility. The mobile correctional facility robots can be used to perform many of the tasks traditionally assigned to correctional facility guards to help reduce the number of guards needed in any given correctional facility. When cooperation is employed among multiple mobile correctional facility robots to execute tasks, a central controller can be used to coordinate the efforts of the multiple robots to improve the performance of the overall system of robots as compared to the performance of the robots when working in uncoordinated effort to execute the tasks.
Claims16
A mobile correctional facility robot comprising:
- a plurality of actuators;
- a sensor array;
- a memory comprising computer program instructions;
- and
- a hardware processing unit configured to execute the computer program instructions to perform a task execution method using the plurality of actuators and sensor data corresponding to physical properties of an environment surrounding the mobile correctional facility robot detected using the sensor array, the task execution method comprising:
- traversing a route to receive an item for delivery;
- receiving the item for delivery;
- and
- transporting the item for delivery to an intended destination, wherein the item for delivery is an item from a correctional facility commissary and the intended destination is a location of an inmate who ordered the item from the correctional facility commissary;
- and
- verifying, by the mobile correctional facility robot, that the inmate who ordered the item from the correctional facility commissary has sufficient funds in an account to pay for the item from the correctional facility commissary.
A method for operating a mobile correctional facility robot, the method comprising:
- transmitting status information of the mobile correctional facility robot to a central controller;
- receiving a delivery task from the central controller, wherein the delivery task is received from the central controller based on both the status information of the mobile correctional facility robot transmitted to the central controller and status information transmitted to the central controller from a plurality of mobile correctional facility robots;
- and
- performing the delivery task using a plurality of actuators and sensor data corresponding to physical properties of an environment surrounding the mobile correctional facility robot by:
- traversing a route to receive an item for delivery,
- receiving the item for delivery, and
- transporting the item for delivery to an intended destination, wherein the item for delivery is an item from a correctional facility commissary and the intended destination is a location of an inmate who ordered the item from the correctional facility commissary;
- and
- verifying, by the mobile correctional facility robot, that the inmate who ordered the item from the correctional facility commissary has sufficient funds in an account to pay for the item from the correctional facility commissary.
A mobile correctional facility robot comprising:
- a plurality of actuators;
- a sensor array;
- a memory comprising computer program instructions;
- and
- a hardware processing unit configured to execute the computer program instructions to perform a method comprising:
- transmitting status information of the mobile correctional facility robot to a central controller;
- receiving a delivery task from the central controller, wherein the delivery task is received from the central controller based on both the status information of the mobile correctional facility robot transmitted to the central controller and status information transmitted to the central controller from a plurality of mobile correctional facility robots, wherein the delivery task includes traversing a route to receive an item for delivery, receiving the item for delivery, and transporting the item for delivery to an intended destination, wherein the item for delivery is an item from a correctional facility commissary and the intended destination is a location of an inmate who ordered the item from the correctional facility commissary;
- performing the delivery task using the plurality of actuators and sensor data corresponding to physical properties of an environment surrounding the mobile correctional facility robot detected using the sensor array;
- and
- verifying, by the mobile correctional facility robot, that the inmate who ordered the item from the correctional facility commissary has sufficient funds in an account to pay for the item from the correctional facility commissary.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.