• human-machine cooperation
• Covid-19 disinfection
• medical robots

The global COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated the production of disinfection robots by institutions and companies. The concept of automated disinfection without involving human operators looks interesting in the eyes of the hospital management, and not only. It can save lives by avoiding the cleaning staff working in highly infected environments. At the same time, it can reduce costs by diminishing staff.

The most commonly adopted robots, like the one from the UVD company, use UV-C light to disinfect surfaces. UV-C radiations alter DNA and RNA so that organisms cannot replicate. Others use also vapor and fogging systems that spray chemical disinfectants, such as ozone.

However, UV-C lamps strongly limit human-machine cooperation. Direct exposure to UV-C radiation to the skin has to be avoided for health reasons.

Fortunately, the outstanding results of machine learning offer new possibilities for robotics automation. It can be used to deeply understand the outside world and take actions accordingly, shutting down the lamps whenever a human is detected. So that human-machine cooperation is enabled.