Can robots help stop the Ebola outbreak?
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US military has enlisted a new germ-killing weapon in the fight against Ebola — a four-wheeled robot that can disinfect a room in minutes with pulses of ultraviolet light.
Resembling a taller, skinnier version of R2D2 from “Star Wars,” the robots are operating at three military medical centers and about 250 other American hospitals are using the machines to destroy pathogens.
Sending out 1.5 pulses per second in a 10-foot radius, the robots use xenon, a non-toxic gas to create the ultraviolet rays that eradicate germs faster and more thoroughly than any human cleaning crew, doctors and officials said.
“The robot is currently part of our Ebola mitigation strategy, but will be used across the hospital to combat a variety of other pathogens known to cause hospital acquired infections,” said Alton Dunham, a spokesman for Langley Air Force Base, which acquired one of the robots in October.
Although ultraviolet light has been around for decades as a tool for cleaning, the new robot uses environmentally friendly xenon instead of mercury-vapor bulbs that are slower-acting and toxic, according to Texas-based Xenex Disinfection Service, which manufactures the machines.
Researchers said the disinfecting robot is just one example of how autonomous devices could play a crucial role in the fight against the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
At a conference this month organized by the White House linking up universities across the country, scientists and aid workers concluded that robots could help haul con- taminated waste or enable health workers to remotely interview patients.
The General Dynamics Land Systems MUTT, a robotic wagon, was cited as a machine already in existence that could be deployed now to help health workers in West Africa, said Robin Murphy, a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University.
But any robot sent over would have to fit into the wider medical effort, take the local culture into account and avoid imposing radical new procedures on stressed health workers, she said.
As a virus that spreads through direct human contact, Ebola demands medical equipment and methods that shield a doctor or a nurse from the risk of infection.
“Robots could reduce the number of times humans handle contaminated waste,” Murphy said.
But a clinic in Liberia or Sierra Leone presents challenges to robots designed in more pristine, Western settings and Wi-Fi access, ample electrical power, batteries and flat floor surfaces may not be readily available in areas where the robots are most needed.