Vision-based Autonomous Disinfection of High Touch Surfaces in Indoor Environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel autonomous UAV system designed for efficient indoor disinfection of high-touch surfaces, optimizing disinfectant use and operating in confined, unstructured environments.

Contribution

It presents the design and implementation of the smallest untethered, fully autonomous UAV with spray capabilities targeting individual high-touch surfaces.

Findings

Effective disinfection of door handles demonstrated

Optimized parameters for disinfectant application identified

UAV operates autonomously in unstructured indoor environments

Abstract

Autonomous systems have played an important role in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Notably, there have been multiple attempts to leverage Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to disinfect surfaces. Although recent research suggests that surface transmission is less significant than airborne transmission in the spread of Covid-19, surfaces and fomites can play, and have played, critical roles in the transmission of Covid-19 and many other viruses, especially in settings such as child daycares, schools, offices, and hospitals. Employing UAVs for mass spray disinfection offers several potential advantages, including high-throughput application of disinfectant, large scale deployment, and the minimization of health risks to sanitation workers. Despite these potential benefits and preliminary usage of UAVs for disinfection, there has been little research into their design and effectiveness. In this work, we present an autonomous UAV capable of effectively disinfecting indoor surfaces. We identify relevant parameters such as disinfectant type and concentration, and application time and distance required of the UAV to disinfect high-touch surfaces such as door handles. Finally, we develop a robotic system that enables the fully autonomous disinfection of door handles in an unstructured and previously unknown environment. To our knowledge, this is the smallest untethered UAV ever built with both full autonomy and spraying capabilities, allowing it to operate in confined indoor settings, and the first autonomous UAV to specifically target high-touch surfaces on an individual basis with spray disinfectant, resulting in more efficient use of disinfectant