ABSTRACT
Robots are being increasingly used in the fight against highly-infectious diseases such as the Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). By using robots in place of human health care workers in disinfection tasks, we can reduce the exposure of these workers to the virus and, as a result, often dramatically reduce their risk of infection. Since healthcare workers are often disproportionately affected by large-scale infectious disease outbreaks, this risk reduction can profoundly affect our ability to fight these outbreaks. Many robots currently available for disinfection, however, are little more than mobile platforms for ultraviolet lights, do not allow fine-grained control over how the disinfection is performed, and do not allow verification that it was done as the human supervisor intended. In this paper, we present a semi-autonomous system, originally designed for the disinfection of surfaces in the context of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) that allows a human supervisor to direct an autonomous robot to disinfect contaminated surfaces to a desired level, and to subsequently verify that this disinfection has taken place. We describe the overall system, the user interface, how our calibration and modeling allows for reliable disinfection, and offer directions for future work to address open space disinfection tasks. © 2022 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has completely changed our lives and how we interact with the world. The pandemic has brought about a pressing need to have effective disinfection practices that can be incorporated into daily life. They are needed to limit the spread of infections through surfaces and air, particularly in public settings. Most of the current methods utilize chemical disinfectants, which can be laborious and time-consuming. Ultraviolet (UV) irradiation is a proven and powerful means of disinfection. There has been a rising interest in the implementation of UV disinfection robots by various public institutions, such as hospitals, long-term care homes, airports, and shopping malls. The use of UV-based disinfection robots could make the disinfection process faster and more efficient. The objective of this review is to equip readers with the necessary background on UV disinfection and provide relevant discussion on various aspects of UV robots.
ABSTRACT
The global COVID-19 pandemic due to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has challenged the availability of traditional surface disinfectants. It has also stimulated the production of ultraviolet-disinfection robots by companies and institutions. These robots are increasingly advocated as a simple solution for the immediate disinfection of rooms and spaces of all surfaces in one process and as such they seem attractive to hospital management, also because of automation and apparent cost savings by reducing cleaning staff. Yet, there true potential in the hospital setting needs to be carefully evaluated. Presently, disinfection robots do not replace routine (manual) cleaning but may complement it. Further design adjustments of hospitals and devices are needed to overcome the issue of shadowing and free the movement of robots in the hospital environment. They might in the future provide validated, reproducible and documented disinfection processes. Further technical developments and clinical trials in a variety of hospitals are warranted to overcome the current limitations and to find ways to integrate this novel technology in to the hospitals of to-day and the future.