How Robots Help Fight Against The Coronavirus Pandemic

Today, we turn to robots on a scale never seen before for help in the global war against the Coronavirus.
In a crisis where people themselves are hazardous, robots become more useful and valued today than ever before.
Meet the UVD Robot, developed by the Danish company of the same name.
UVD stands for ultraviolet disinfection, and as the name suggests, the UVD Robot plays a critical role in fighting the Coronavirus, keeping surfaces disinfected.
It is Wifi enabled and is directed to clean rooms by the hospital staff via a mobile app.
Microbiological laboratories have clinically tested and verified that UVD kills 99.99% of bacteria.
It does this by using a 360-degree array of powerful short-wavelength ultraviolet-C lights that destroy the DNA or RNA of any microorganism that it hits.
With a fully charged battery, it can run up to 2.5 hours long enough to disinfect 10 rooms and then takes 6 hours to charge back up.
And as scientists diligently work on a virus, disinfecting robots like UVD are being deployed all around the world to keep surfaces sterile.

UVD has shipped hundreds of robots to China, throughout Europe and plans to ship hundreds to the US.

They are being deployed not only for Hospitals but also for public spaces such as airports, universities, and government buildings.

And there are a handful of Robotics companies working hard to keep up with the demand for UVD robots.

Another UVD Robot manufacture Xenex is also working hard to keep up with demand.

Xenex is based out of San Antonio TX and manufactures the X5 Lightstrike Robot UVD robot that has similar capabilities as the aforementioned Danish variety.

Over 400 hospitals around the US already have a Xenex disinfecting robot.

And Xenex sales are up 600% from last year, having shipped hundreds to Italy and Japan on top of domestic sales.

From disinfecting robots, we also turned to delivery robots to safely transport needed items such as food and medicine without human interaction.
This is a Self-Driving Delivery Robot manufactured by Starship Technologies.

The company was launched in 2014 and is headquartered out of San Francisco.
Their robot is designed to carry packages, groceries, or food from partnering business directly to customers who place orders via a mobile app.
Ordered can be placed within a 4-mile radius, and customers can monitor the robots’ path and location from their smartphones.
The contents are securely locked until the recipient unlocks it upon delivery.
The robot uses Computer vision along with GPS to track its exact location to the nearest inch.
Its obstacle detection system is equipped with 10 cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and neural networks that allow it to distinguish between objects such as pedestrians cyclists and dogs.
Starship Technologies has robots operating in three major cities in the united states and also in the UK, Germany, and Estonia.
Their robots combined have traveled 300,000 miles and made over 100,000 deliveries to date.
Fairfax Virginia has a fleet of 20 Starship robots that have been in service on the George Mason University campus since January 2019.
Now the city has put the fleet to use so that restaurants can provide meals to customers without human contact in the fight against the outbreak.
Ryan Tuohy, who works in Starship’s business development department, release a statement saying that the demand for contactless delivery has grown exponentially since the crisis.
The company has recently added a grocery delivery service in Washington, DC, and Irvine, CA.
Now we go to China, where it all began, to the Chinese startup ZhenRobotics, which is rolling out their delivery robot called RoboPony.
The RoboPony is like the Starship robot in a lot of ways, but it can carry a lot more weight with a limit of 90 lbs vs. Starship’s 20.
ZhenRobotics plans to produce 90 RoboPonies in the coming weeks.
Sticking with China, we go to Unity Drive Innovation or UDI that has developed this awesome looking delivery robot, Hercules.
Hercules is essentially a fully autonomous electric vehicle capable of delivering 1,000 kilograms of cargo.
It is powered by an industrial-grade computer that uses lidars, cameras, and deep-learning algorithms to drive itself.
UDI’s fleet has made over 2,500 deliveries in three cities in China since February as the country fights against the spread of the virus.
The US has a similar vehicle being tested by CA-based startup Nuro AI.
Nuro AI recently became the first American autonomous vehicle developer to be given exemptions for testing on public roads without the need to have controls for human operators.
The company was founded by Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu in 2016.
Before founding Nuro, Ferguson and Zhu were principle engineers for Google’s self-driving project.
Nuro AI developed the R2, the fully autonomous delivery vehicle designed to deliver groceries.

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