University of Louisville developing robot to disinfect areas with coronavirus risk

“In times like this, where we are battling a highly contagious virus, our health care professionals are at the forefront and are exposed to it. We hope that our technology will help contribute towards providing solutions to the challenges that our community is facing right now.”

Many doctors, nurses, EMTs and other health care workers have risked infection while fighting the coronavirus pandemic. But researchers at the University of Louisville think they have a solution that could help reduce that risk. The idea is to use an artificially intelligent robot they call ARNA — Adaptive Robot Nursing Assistant — to perform some tasks and cleaning in areas where it might be dangerous to send human hospital staff. The bot has been outfitted with an ultraviolet disinfecting light and sprayable sanitizing agent so it can clean commonly touched surfaces where the virus might live, such as handles, tables and elevator buttons.

ARNA was originally invented to help with round-the-clock patient monitoring and allow nurses to focus more on direct patient care by taking on some of their time-consuming tasks. Now, the research team, part of the Louisville Automation and Robotics Research Institute, or LARRI, hopes ARNA can help hospital workers during pandemic. They have tested the bot in the Shumaker Research Building on UofL’s Belknap campus, and hope soon to test it in a hospital setting. UofL biology researchers are working on developing the sanitizing method and will test surfaces for virality in the Shumaker trial.

Read the full story from University of Louisville here.