ABSTRACT
The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything ranging from loss of precious lives to economic and social activities. These changes have undoubtedly inflicted substantial economic and social shocks as global production, consumption, and employment levels dropped precipitously. Still, several positive changes were observed in terms of environmental quality. The most visible impact on the environment has been a reduction in greenhouse emissions from transportation sources, especially air and road transport, which account for a substantial portion of pollution. Beyond transportation, however, other sources that would generally have contributed to pollution were also curtailed. As many establishments were shut down, offices and facilities could afford to run on lower power rather than operational during business hours. Aside from air pollution, industrial waste also affects sources of water as well as land. This has also been reduced due to the pandemic, especially in regions where there is poor implementation of waste management regulations. At the same time, ecological hotspots, where human activity is usually pervasive, has observed an improved environmental quality, enabling wildlife and other life forms to prosper efficiently. On one side, the pandemic reveals how reduced anthropocentric activities can lead to substantial mitigation in environmental pollution. On the other hand, it emphasises the urgency to revisit global environmental policies to sustain this environmental quality for future generations. It is, however, pertinent to mention here that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the environment is unlikely to be linear. Still many alternatives viz., work from home, online studying, e-commerce, planting of trees, etc., can be institutionalised through law and policymaking to ensure the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and energy sector. The researcher thus visualises that COVID-19 has inaugurated a new green order and invite attention of relevant stakeholders as to how to sustain such change in the times to come.
ABSTRACT
Due to the sever circumstances in the global pandemic, there has been an immense need for disinfectant robot technology. This pandemic has made people much more aware about the severity of virus transmission in public areas. This prompts society to be much more aware of the need to maintain a clean environment. The purpose of this paper is to present the design principles of an Autonomous Indoor Cleaning Robot (AICR) developed to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in indoor environments such as small shops and office settings. Its main purpose is to proactively disinfect the air and maintain a clean breathing environment by actively targeting populated areas with the use of a vision system, using Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (VSLAM) technology. Currently there are other air disinfection products on the market also making use of a combination of a High-Efficiency Particulate Absorbing (HEPA) air purifier and Ultra Violet (UV) light to kill airborne viruses like the Coronavirus. However, all of these are stationary with lack of intelligence machines that have to be kept or manually wheeled from room to room. The device proposed in the paper is a fully autonomous air purifying device capable of going to certain critical regions of the indoor environment to disinfect the air in that area without any human interaction. The stationary purifiers should be much more powerful covering a larger area which makes them very expensive. In contrast, the developed autonomous air purifier needs much less power consumption compared to static purifiers, with the advantage of intelligently and dynamically learning the status of the room using the information captured from the occupancy, itself, and the environment. © 2021 IEEE