Currently, the United States is experiencing an increase in COVID-19 cases as states begin to drop restrictions and allow companies to reopen. With people venturing outside and returning to offices, it is more important than ever to neutralize coronavirus particles on surfaces before they can increase the infection rate. MIT has developed a robot that navigates spaces to destroy the virus with ultraviolet light. The team even tested the system at a Boston-area food bank with encouraging results.
The most important source of coronavirus particles is an infected person, but these people can leave viruses on surfaces and move through the air that can be infectious for several days. The UV robot comes from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) as a way to clear these unwanted visitors from public spaces using the power of ultraviolet radiation.
You’ve probably heard about the dangers of doctors’ UV-A and UV-B light and the occasional bottle of sunscreen. UV-C is a higher energy form of ultraviolet radiation with a wavelength between 280 and 100 nanometers. UV-A is as high as 400nm, and X-rays start at around 10nm. So UV-C is much more harmful to living organisms than UV-A and UV-B. Fortunately, the sun’s UV-C rays are absorbed by the atmosphere before reaching us. However, you can use artificial UV-C radiation to effectively sterilize objects.
The robotic base of the CSAIL project comes from Ava Robotics, which manufactures telepresence machines. The team replaced the screen that is usually located on top of the robot with a custom ultraviolet lighting platform. MIT decided to test the system at the Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB). Since UV-C is dangerous to all living organisms, it can only work when no one is around. Being a telepresence robot, it is easy for a remote operator to guide you through GBFB facilities by setting waypoints. Later, the robot can simply follow those benchmarks autonomously.
As the robot moves through the hallways at 0.22 miles per hour, the UV-C sweeps over every surface. It takes just half an hour to cover an area of 4,000 square feet, delivering enough UV-C energy to neutralize approximately 90 percent of coronaviruses (and other organisms) on surfaces. Currently, the team’s focus is on improving the algorithms that run the GBFB system, but that can lead to more robotic UV scrubbers. CSAIL hopes to use the data collected at GBFB to design automated UV cleaning systems for dormitories, schools, planes and supermarkets.
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