Case Study:
Optics for Vision-Guided Cleaning Robots

Combatting COVID-19
with Machine Vision

Frequent cleaning of high-traffic areas, for instance, hospitals, airports, and public transit systems, is crucial to curtailing the spread of COVID-19. A wave of new vision-guided cleaning robots has been deployed to safely sanitize these locations without putting front-line workers, such as janitorial staff, in harm’s way, simultaneously killing germs and minimizing human contact.

Lidar, a laser-based remote sensing method, or machine vision lenses and cameras allow these robots to navigate through their environment, dodge obstacles, and ensure that all required surfaces have been cleaned. Many such robots sanitize surfaces using ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which destroys the DNA or RNA of viruses when operated at a sufficient optical power.¹ At the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, China introduced thousands of UV-based cleaning robots and this technology has now made its way to other countries. In San Diego, CA, a hospital is disinfecting 30 COVID-19 patient rooms and breakrooms every day using a fleet of robots that are able to completely sanitize a room in 12 minutes; this same task would ordinarily take 90 minutes for human employees to perform.²