Stories have been emerging about epic, even life-saving development sprints[1] in the days after COVID-19 took hold. Teams working in a variety of spaces, from data management and tele-health to robotics and IoT spotted adjacent opportunities to develop technologies to fight the pandemic during what may turn out to be one of the most fertile technology sprints in modern history.
A new entry in the list is Weston Robot[2], a Singapore-based robot[3] developer and supplier that, at the time of the first outbreaks, had designed a variety of robots for various markets, including compact surveillance robots with wheels designed for uneven terrain, as well as autonomous cars and even robotic exoskeletons. As the pressing demands of the pandemic began to sink in, the Weston team turned its focus on a critical problem: Using the mobile robots in its product well to aid in disinfecting.
"We asked ourselves, 'Can we add something to these robots, for example, a spray gun to spray chemical disinfectant?'" says Dr. Yanliang Zhang, managing director and chief scientist of Weston Robot.
The team quickly decided that retrofitting its existing technology would be the best route forward, and that set off a development spring that will surely be enshrined in company lore for years to come.
"The first day that COVID-19 was announced to be infectious in humans, my team came together and said 'We design robots, is there something we can do to mitigate the spread of the virus?' " says Zhang. "Obviously, we could not totally design a new robot model at that time. Instead, we wanted to take advantage of what we have already: mobile robots."
Over the next 10 days, the team developed two mobile disinfecting robots -- one for large open areas like airports