Abstract— The presented paper describes a design process of a robotic system capable of disinfecting surfaces and air by means of UV-C radiation. Two robots were designed, to cover the broadest spectrum of decontamination needs as well as complement each other’s cleaning results. First, ROBUV-SUR is capable of disinfecting surfaces and can autonomously disinfect rooms and corridors with minimal human input. The second one – ROBUV-AIR – is designed to operate alongside people traversing corridors and hallways whilst cleaning air. Both of designed robotic mobile platforms use UV-C emitters adapted to fulfil the desired task. Its electronics composition and operation algorithm follow mechanical design’s description. The next part of the paper considers the optimal UV-C radiation source suitable for each respected task. Our tests have shown that while commonly used UV-C radiation sources such as mercury-type fluorescent lamps are ideal for this use case, novel high power solid-state LEDs are subject to ageing, rendering them unsuitable for our project.

Index Terms— mobile robot, UV-C radiation, ultraviolet, decontamination, disinfection

Cite: Kazimierz Dzierżek, Maciej Rećko, Maciej Zajkowski, and Urszula Błaszczak, "RobUV–Robotic Decontamination System," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 11, No. 6, pp. 405-410, June 2022. DOI: 10.18178/ijmerr.11.6.405-410

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