The arrival of COVID-19 has increased demand for people to disinfect buildings, rooms and surfaces, but that work can be dangerous and expensive. That’s why mechanical engineers at UVA are fine-tuning a robot to do the job.
Professor Tomonari Furukawa led a team of engineering students at UVA and Virginia Tech to build a robot that could do jobs in dangerous settings – fight fires, clean-up chemical spills, complete tasks in extreme heat or radioactive settings.
Now, they’ve turned their attention to disinfecting hospitals, clinics and commercial settings where the new coronavirus may be living.
“Manual disinfection is very risky and also labor intensive,” Furukawa explains.
With his university lab closed during the pandemic, Furukawa brought graduate student Dean Conte and computer scientist Spencer Leamy to the garage at his house, where they retrofitted their robot with ultraviolet lamps:
“UVC lights are most dangerous to humans," he says. "At the same time it’s good at killing virus and bacteria.”
They added a robotic arm, a screen and camera, allowing the robot to create a 3D map of any space and to focus virus-killing rays into the air, onto walls, floors, ceilings and surfaces plus any place where coronavirus could live.
“The robot can actually do much better work than the human cleaners," Furukawa claims. "It is much safer. It is more reliable.”
Now, they’re looking for partners and sponsors to help them bring their creation to the market where it can get to work.
