UltraBot: Autonomous Mobile Robot for Indoor UV-C Disinfection with Non-trivial Shape of Disinfection Zone

TL;DR

UltraBot is an autonomous indoor UV-C disinfection robot designed to efficiently disinfect areas without harmful chemicals, using optimized path planning and a multi-pass UV-C and ozone-based air purification technique.

Contribution

The paper introduces UltraBot's mechanical, electrical design, and a novel method for calculating its disinfection zone shape for optimal coverage.

Findings

Achieves 1-log reduction in disinfection effectiveness.

Performs as well as ten minutes static disinfection.

Demonstrates effective multi-pass UV-C disinfection at 0.14 m/s.

Abstract

The paper focuses on the development of an autonomous disinfection robot UltraBot to reduce COVID-19 transmission along with other harmful bacteria and viruses. The motivation behind the research is to develop such a robot that is capable of performing disinfection tasks without the use of harmful sprays and chemicals that can leave residues and require airing the room afterward for a long time. UltraBot technology has the potential to offer the most optimal autonomous disinfection performance along with taking care of people, keeping them from getting under the UV-C radiation. The paper highlights UltraBot's mechanical and electrical design as well as disinfection performance. The conducted experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of robot disinfection ability and actual disinfection area per each side with UV-C lamp array. The disinfection effectiveness results show actual performance for the multi-pass technique that provides 1-log reduction with combined direct UV-C exposure and ozone-based air purification after two robot passes at a speed of 0.14 m/s. This technique has the same performance as ten minutes static disinfection. Finally, we have calculated the non-trivial form of the robot disinfection zone by two consecutive experiment to produce optimal path planning and to provide full disinfection in selected areas.