Imagine walking into a room wearing an N95 mask, unsure whether the cleaning crew has thoroughly cleaned the next piece of sensitive equipment that you are planning to use. Suddenly, you notice a robot in the room. This robot is moving around you to disinfect the surfaces and the air all around you. It introduces itself as Violet. You have the urge to shake its hand.

Never has disinfecting and killing germs in businesses at home been more on the minds of people than it has during the coronavirus pandemic. For many years hospitals and other medical facilities have used UV light to kill germs and bacteria to keep people from getting sick. A new robot created by MIT's CSAIL is being used at the Greater Boston Food Bank to disinfects the warehouse using UV-C light. The creators of the robot say that it's able to disinfect the warehouse floor in half an hour. Similar robots could be used to grocery stores, schools, and other spaces to disinfect.

What do you do when you have to disinfect an entire warehouse? You could send a group of people through the place with UV-C lamps, but that would take a long time as said humans cannot be in the same area as the UV-C radiation, as much as they may like the smell of BBQ chicken. Constantly repositioning the lamps or installing countless lamps would get in the way during normal operation. The answer is to strap UV-C lights to a robot according to MIT's CSAIL, and have it ride around the space. As can be seen in the video (also embedded after the break), a CSAIL group has been working with telepresence robotics company Ava Robotics and the Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB).

A new robot developed by MIT in the US is being used to kill coronavirus in a 4,000-square-foot warehouse using ultraviolet light (UV) light. The autonomous machine uses a specific type of short-wavelength UV, known as UVC, to kill microorganisms and disrupt their DNA in a process known as'ultraviolet germicidal irradiation'. UVC is emitted from the bot's four vertical beams as it nips around warehouse aisles, killing 90 per cent of coronavirus particles in 30 minutes. Because UVC light is harmful to humans, the robot has to do its work alone and is sent to do its sanitising shift when human workers have clocked off. The robot can map an entire industrial facility – in this case the Great Boston Food Bank (GBFB), a US non-profit that provides hunger relief.

Vanora Robots Pvt Ltd, a Mangaluru-based robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, has launched an unmanned robotic platform to disinfect the rooms in hospitals, schools, etc. Terming the robotic platform as a support system for the front-line fighters of Covid-19, Krishnan Nambiar, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vanora Robots, told BusinessLine that that this fully functional unmanned robotic platform disperses high doses of'type C' ultraviolet rays to destroy the structure of bacteria, fungal spores, and many types of viruses, including various types of corona viruses. He said that the best way to fight anything that is multiplying out of control is to destroy it quicker than it multiplies. When UV light is used in a particular energy, the structure of micro-organisms dies. He said that Vanora Robot can disinfect a 140-sq.ft During this period, the robot gives full visual access to the person controlling it remotely.

The US military is set to use'corona-killing robots' equip with ultraviolet light (UV) to disinfect enclosed spaces. The four-wheeled autonomous robots would eliminate the need of human workers and complete the task in a matter of hours, instead of days. The technology is capable of radiating nearly 110 watts using a vertical UV mount that disinfects a surface two feet away in just over a minute. Although experts have not yet determined if UV kills the virus, the military said it is'employing double the wattage known to kill other coronavirus variants to ensure effectiveness,' Military.com The four-wheeled autonomous robots would eliminate the need of human workers and complete the task in a matter of hours, instead of days.