KILLING COVID WITH LIGHT

Schools, corporate headquarters, and other institutions are stocking up on bleach and microsprayers and are hiring extra staff to constantly clean surfaces where the COVID virus may lurk.
Now Corvus Robotics has found a way to eliminate all that extra work and gear.
The Boston-based drone maker has devised a robot that stops coronaviruses with light.
The vigilante is a collection of vertical tubes that look like fluorescent light bulbs. The bulbs pulse ultraviolet light at very short wavelengths that have been shown to damage coronaviruses’ DNA, leaving them unable to reproduce.
The tubes are mounted on a motorized, wheeled base holding batteries and a computer. A human must guide the robot along its first trip through the area to be treated while the onboard computer makes a map.
Once the unit has learned the terrain, the light robot can be turned on through an app or programmed to start at a certain time. A person also can tell the computer to clean a specific area and set it to work at any time.
The robot is priced at $25,000 but can be rented for unlimited use for $1.500 a month.
TRENDPOST: Versions of Corvus’s robot virus-killer could potentially be made as tabletop units or even as drones. Mass production would lower the price to put it within reach of almost any school, office, or business.