A San Antonio-based company called Xenex has risen to media prominence recently thanks to their ultraviolet pulse robot called Little Moe. The robot can enter and clean a hospital room in five minutes and destroy the virus by fusing its DNA. You can watch the cute local news piece about the below.
The technology isn’t particularly new. It works by flashing surfaces with ultraviolet light which in turn damages viral DNA. It uses a particularly bright type of xenon lamp that can “can penetrate and damage organisms in unique ways.”
Sadly the robot doesn’t move itself through the hospital like a virus-destroying Roomba. Instead, you place the robot in a room, set up the room type and number, and arm the robot. It then raises its pulsing and starts firing UV light into the room.
Medical robotics is a big business and it is changing daily. While telemedicine and the like get all the ink, robots like Little Moe are important because they do one thing and they do it very well, in this case room disinfection. And if a cute name and an Ebola scare are what it takes to move medical science forward, I’m all for it.
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