Development of a teleoperated robot based on an experimental design for sterilization in Honduras

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) took the world by surprise; even the most developed countries are having troubles containing this virus. Stopping the infections and reducing the risks caused by this virus and other bacteria became the priority of many countries. For which, many countries applied various technologies during the pandemic. The aim of this research is to develop a UV-C teleoperated robot to sterilize hospital operating rooms based on an experimental design. This development was obtained after applying the V method and some experimentation tests. This V method allows to break down a mechatronic product into systems, subsystems, and parts. The main systems developed were the sterilization system and the locomotion system. The independent variables are radio of exposition and sterilization time. The dependent variable of this study was the percentage of sterilization wich is affected by the robot mobility, time and distance. For the development of the project, SolidWorks was used for simulations of locomotion, and structure design, Matlab for visualization of graphs and Excel Solver for the application of a non-linear model of reduced gradient for optimization of the variables. The sterilization system was based on the collection of experimental data from different tests resulting in a UV-C dose of 1252 J/m
²
. Based on the optimization, a sterilization time of 8.2 minutes and less than 100 cm was obtained for a sterilization of 99%. It can be teleoperated with radio frequency and camera. According to the mobility and sterilization tests that were developed experimentally, the robot could be teleoperated to sterilize operating rooms in hospitals.