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IPFS News Link • Robots and Artificial Intelligence

MIT Scientists Design Autonomous UV Robot That Can Disinfect Boston Food Bank in Just 30 Minutes

• By Good News Network

Using UV-C light, the system can disinfect a warehouse floor in half an hour—and could one day be employed in grocery stores, schools, and other spaces.
Written by Rachel Gordon
MIT News

With every droplet that we can't see, touch, or feel dispersed into the air, the threat of spreading COVID-19 persists. It's become increasingly critical to keep these heavy droplets from lingering—especially on surfaces, which are welcoming and generous hosts.

Thankfully, our chemical cleaning products are effective—but using them to disinfect larger settings can be expensive, dangerous, and time-consuming.

With that in mind, a team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), in collaboration with Ava Robotics and the Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB), designed a new robotic system that powerfully disinfects surfaces and neutralizes aerosolized forms of the coronavirus.

The approach uses a custom UV-C light fixture designed at CSAIL that is integrated with Ava Robotics' mobile robot base. The results were encouraging enough that researchers say that the approach could be useful for autonomous UV disinfection in other environments, such as factories, restaurants, and supermarkets.


www.universityofreason.com/a/29887/KWADzukm