Background
This project was funded from a special COVID-19 focused Project Call released by the ARM Institute in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense.
The ARM Institute rapidly responded to the Department of Defense’s need to address COVID-19 by forming numerous national teams, drawing from diverse industries and technologies to address the myriad of supply chain shortages. This is highlighted by a few of the key statistics listed below:
- Rapid contracting with 45 days from the Project Call release to project start
- Projects executed in 12 months
- 13 states and Puerto Rico engaged
- 23 unique organizations participated across the nine projects
Objective
This project catalyzed an automated disinfection solution that will both disinfect and keep records of the cleaning tasks completed.
Technical Approach
Due to the rapid transmutability of COVID-19, frequent surface disinfection is required for businesses and workspaces to operate safely. The current method of manual cleaning is not ideal because it puts another person into the space who could get sick or transmit the virus. This project developed an autonomous mobile robot with a mounted collaborative multi-axis robotic arm capable of manipulating both a disinfection system and a sensor suite. The system identifies areas that need disinfecting, execute the disinfecting process, and keep records of the cleaning tasks completed.
Impact
The commercially deployed solution is projected to cost less than $100K.
Return-on-investment is projected to take between several weeks to four months, depending on environment size/ complexity and retreatment frequency.
Disinfecting 10,000 ft2 is expected to take just eight hours based on: prototype operating speeds of 2.15 ft2/sec, the 6ft diameter effective UV-C tower, moderate number of areas requiring secondary disinfection/region, using one treatment per region, and handling large spaces with multiple robots.
Participants
Principal Investigator: Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories
Project Team: GrayMatter Robotics, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Lockheed Martin Rotary Mission Systems