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COVID-19 Impact on Cleaning Robotsin Semiconductors and Electronics Industry
Coronavirus can be transmitted via contact with the contaminated surfaces. Therefore, to control this spread, deeper and regular cleaning arises for almost every indoor surface such as healthcare facilities, airports, and educational centers. Adding to this, the need for minimizing human exposure is also essential due to the increase in the spread of the COVID-19. This result has generated interest in cleaning and disinfection robots. As per World Health Organization (WHO), traditional cleaning methods in the COVID scenario are only 60% effective. Cleaning robots or disinfect surfaces, walls and floors with increasingly complex distribution systems. For instance, routine cleaning at Hong Kong metro, Smart Field Hospital in Wuhan, and others. These robot types work through the combination of both semi-automated and automated processes. However, it has been witnessed that UV-C light and disinfectant chemicals can be hazardous to human health; thus, people need to leave the space or that particular room at the time of cleaning. Robotics uses advent sensors to guarantee optimum productivity and safety.
Moreover, to improve the safety level, robots are built with multi-layered sensors that not only do the mapping accurately but also detect the changes in their respective surroundings. COVID-19 has put cleaning front and centers in facility maintenance. The cleaning industry is making novel process and implementation strategies for effective and efficient results.
IMPACT ON DEMAND AND SUPPLY CHAIN
After the discharge of the patients in the healthcare industry, cleaning the ceilings, walls, baseboard, and every place where a pathogen can live becomes very important. However, cleaning is done at every corner and in a very minute is very difficult, resulting in cleaning robots playing a crucial role. Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are purchasing the ultraviolet robots that further drive the demand of automation globally with not just having competent machinery but can restrict human contact and eliminate germs for the betterment of the people.
For instance,
• As per Neil Mandalia, and environmental services director, all COVID-19 patient rooms and few break rooms that are in total; up to thirty spaces of the San Diego based hospital get disinfected every day by the cleaning robots.
• LightStrike, a powerful robot that is a box on the wheel and a mushroom shaped light attached to it, is being utilized at the San Diego hospital to disinfect almost 99.99% of the virus, which results in covid-19 in less than 5 mins from every space.
In the medical field, cleaning robots are also strongly utilized in public transportation, stadiums, and airports where each related authorities are coming up with the advanced technologies such as floor scrubbers, disinfecting drones, and others, which deals in automated cleaning. In stadiums, the related authorities use drones inside a sports stadium to spray the disinfectant solution on thousands of seats to make it a safe area for the crowds.
For instance,
• EagleHawk, a company deals in delivering solution in relation with the service inspection by utilizing drones and thermal imaging technology, spent many months studying the technique to spray huge stadium to disinfect the virus in the shorter time span. Otherwise, this would be too expensive and time-consuming to disinfect such big spaces fully
• The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs massive transportation in New York City, U.S., is involved in testing the UV light to kill the coronavirus on busses and trains to make each ride safer for the passenger in this pandemic situation. For this, they have started utilizing approximately 150 UV lights from the Puro Lighting Company who deals with fully robotic disinfecting light, which will both map as well as direct the entire room on its own even in the absence of an operator
• Brain Corp., an AI company, reported a 24% increase in the utilization rate of BrainOS-powered autonomous robots during the second quarter of the COVID-19 pandemic. This works in numerous robots for vacuum sweepers, shelf scanners, floor scrubbers and in-store delivery tugs. It has been witnessed that more than 10,000 are deployed globally in malls, groceries, hospitals, airports and other public places
• Breezy One, a cleaning robot, cleans 200,000 sq.ft. of office and conference rooms in approximately two hours by spraying a mist of virus-killing disinfectant onto the surfaces
Despite being useful and advantageous, it also acts as a long-term risk to workers with low wages, mainly those who perform janitorial work. By this time, even working-class people face high unemployment risks due to the rise in automation through the whole economy as companies are looking for ways to save costs.
This pandemic will not last forever, but the cleaning and disinfection robots will persist and expand into numerous hospitals, hotels, stadiums, and warehouses in the forecast period. Thus, due to the rising demand for such robots, the manufacturers are involved in manufacturing, cleaning robots to cater to important businesses.
STRATEGY ADOPTED BY MANUFACTURERS OR STEPS TAKEN FOR CLEANING ROBOTS
The arrival of the COVID-19 outbreak has developed as a prominent development for the cleaning robot market worldwide. The companies are focused on cleaning robots with more advanced technologies, namely UVC light. This in result has attracted significant funding and investment opportunities across different ranges.
For instance,
• In October 2020, Genrobotics raised USD 3.41 million from its key investor namely Unicorn India Ventures in pre-Series A funding round for manufacturing Bandicoot, a fully automated manhole cleaning robot. This robot will encompass a drone unit and a stand unit.
• In July 2020, Next Generation Manufacturing (NGen), supports the production of disinfection robots by co-investing USD 5 million in Canada to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Adding to this, several companies have entered into different strategic decisions for offering cleaning robots to enhance its revenue and maximize their customer base.
For instance,
• In December 2020, LG Electronics worked on an autonomous robot that uses UV light for disinfecting mainly for retail, hospitality, corporate customers, and education.
• In July 2020, Omron came up with UVC disinfection in its robot named LD UVC, which is a co-formation with Techmetics Robotics to fight the COVID-19 spread conveniently and effectively.
CONCLUSION
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, technological initiatives and applications are multiplying in an attempt to fight against the COVID-19. Automation has played a vital role as Artificial intelligence (AI), drones and robots are being deployed to help track the disease, remove virus, and enforce restrictive measures for people’s safety most cost-effectively within a short duration along with effective results. Thus, this adds multiple opportunities for cleaning robots to continue expanding their usage in all public places in the upcoming year.
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