STTR Phase I: Autonomous Disinfecting Robot for Crowded Spaces

这一小企业技术转让项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是应对新冠肺炎大流行病。这项拟议的工作将迅速创造出新的自主机器人，用于医院和其他交通繁忙、地表传播病原体传播风险高的地区的卫生。这一努力产生的自主消毒系统将填补一个关键空白，即在医疗保健系统忙于应对不断演变的新冠肺炎危机之际，确保医院空间保持卫生。此外，该解决方案将广泛适用于控制医院获得性感染，每年影响美国200多万人，总体经济影响为4500亿美元。拟议的自主高灵活性机器人预计将成功地保持约10,000平方英尺商业空间中的高接触区域可靠地消毒，并可能适用于超过500亿平方英尺的公共商业空间(办公室、工业、医疗保健、酒店、零售等)。在美国。更快、更高效、更有针对性的圣蒂化有可能极大地减少这些空间的停机时间和消毒所需的劳动力。这个短途旅行机器人第一阶段项目，为应对持续的新冠肺炎危机，将迅速为能够在拥挤环境中精确导航表面的机器人开发新的机器人系统和算法。这一新系统将能够在接近人类的地方进行选择性消毒，消除现有全房间单源紫外线辐射机器人要求房间空置的关键限制。紫外光技术在改善医院的卫生条件和通过最大限度地减少化学品使用来降低成本方面有着巨大的前景，但由于对哺乳动物细胞的不良影响，该技术的应用有限。机械臂和聚焦照明的选择性曝光能力将缓解这一限制，打开紫外线照明在医院卫生中的进一步应用。为了实现这一目标，该项目将推进机器人学的关键领域，包括动态障碍物存在时的同步定位和测绘(SLAM)算法，以及手臂对具有各种对象的表面和人类附近的控制。这些努力将推动机器人在医疗保健和其他行业中的应用的科学和实践。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project is to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed work will rapidly create new autonomous robots for sanitization in hospitals and other high-traffic areas with high risk of surface-borne pathogen transmission. The autonomous sanitizing system produced by this effort would fill a crucial void in ensuring hospital spaces are kept sanitized as the health care system scrambles to respond to the evolving COVID-19 crisis. In addition, the solution will be widely applicable in controlling Hospital Acquired Infections, affecting over 2 million people in the US annually, with an overall economic impact of $45 B. The proposed autonomous high-dexterity robots are projected to successfully keep the high-touch areas in about 10,000 square feet of commercial space reliably sanitized and could be applicable to the over 50 billion square feet of public commercial space (office, industrial, healthcare, hospitality, retail, etc.) in the US. Faster, more efficient, and targeted santization has potential to dramatically reduce downtime of these spaces and the labor required for sanitization. This STTR Phase I project, in response to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, will rapidly develop new robotic systems and algorithms for robots capable of precisely navigating surfaces in crowded environments. This new system will be capable of selective sanitization in the proximity of humans, removing the key limitation of existing full-room single-source UV radiation based robots requiring the room to be unoccupied. UV light technology has tremendous promise in improving sanitization at hospitals and reducing costs by minimizing chemical use, but the technology has had limited application due to ill effects on mammalian cells. The selective exposure capability with the use of the robotic arm and focused lighting will alleviate that limitation, opening up further uses of UV lighting in hospital sanitization. Toward this goal, this project will advance key areas of robotics, including Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms in the presence of dynamic obstacles, and the control of arms over surfaces with varied objects and in the vicinity of humans. These efforts will advance the science and practice of robotics for applications in healthcare and other industries.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.