Intelligent Disinfection Robot with High-Touch Surface Detection and Dynamic Pedestrian Avoidance

The increasing awareness of public health issues has highlighted the need for effective disinfection of crowded indoor public areas, leading to the development of automated disinfection robots. However, most of the existing robots spray disinfectant in all areas, and they are still immature to navigate in densely populated environments. Hence, in this paper, we design a new disinfection robotic system consisting of a mobile platform, an RGB-D camera, and a robotic arm with a spray disinfection device. To address the above challenges, we propose a vision-based method for accurately detecting high-touch areas in the surroundings, enabling the disinfection robot to achieve superior disinfection efficiency. In addition, we propose a dynamic pedestrian avoidance method, namely Socially Aware APF (SA-APF), which can predict the movement trend of pedestrians and plan the path in real-time. Both simulated and real-world experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of our disinfection robot system, especially highlighting the ability to detect high-touch areas and navigate in the environment while avoiding dynamic pedestrians.

I. Introduction

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with an escalation in public health conscientiousness, has underscored the urgent necessity of proficiently disinfecting densely populated environments to mitigate the onset of infectious diseases [1]. Public interiors, notably hospitals, hospitality establishments, and civic hubs, are particularly vulnerable to the dispersal of viral contagions, compounded by the confluence of heavy pedestrian traffic and inherent ventilation impediments. Although conventional manual disinfection methods are prevalent, their protracted time requirements and limited efficacy persist as notable drawbacks [2]. Nonetheless, such exposure and potential transmission may imperil the health and safety of the well-being of the sanitation workforce.