Robot Development and Path Planning for Indoor Ultraviolet Light Disinfection
Jonathan Conroy, Christopher Thierauf, Parker Rule, Evan Krause, Hugo Akitaya, Andrei Gonczi, Matias Korman, Matthias Scheutz
Abstract
Regular irradiation of indoor environments with ultraviolet C (UVC) light has become a regular task for many in-door settings as a result of COVID-19, but current robotic systems attempting to automate it suffer from high costs and inefficient irradiation. In this paper, we propose a purpose-made inexpensive robotic platform with off-the-shelf components and standard navigation software that, with a novel algorithm for finding optimal irradiation locations, addresses both shortcomings to offer affordable and efficient solutions for UVC irradiation. We demonstrate in simulations the efficacy of the algorithm and show a prototypical run of the autonomous integrated robotic system in an indoor environment. In our sample instances, our proposed algorithm reduces the time needed by roughly 30% while it increases the coverage by a factor of 35% (when compared to the best possible placement of a static light).
BibTeX
@inproceedings{icra2021_robotdevelopment,
title = {Robot Development and Path Planning for Indoor Ultraviolet Light Disinfection},
author = {Jonathan Conroy and Christopher Thierauf and Parker Rule and Evan Krause and Hugo Akitaya and Andrei Gonczi and Matias Korman and Matthias Scheutz},
booktitle = {ICRA 2021},
year = {2021}
}