The Valencia General Hospital has today become the first health facility to be disinfected with a remote-controlled robot equipped with deep ultraviolet rays (UVC), created by military engineers from the Ministry of Defense, and which, given its effectiveness, could be built to Large scale if all tests continue to be on track.
The project of the Spanish Army has been baptized Atila (antivirus by autonomous ultraviolet lighting), in a nod to the King of the Huns who was preceded by the fame of sweeping away all glimpses of life in his path, and has been developed by the Support Command Logistics (MAL) with the participation of explosives deactivation technicians and experts in bacteriological warfare from the Paterna NBQ Regiment, the only one of its kind in all of Spain.
Defense began to mount tubes of far ultraviolet radiation (far UVC) beams, commonly used in the disinfection of operating rooms and surgical equipment, three weeks ago in the robots used for the remote deactivation of explosives, specifically, on the Theodor model.
The device has been tested, with good results, in military installations in Madrid, but has not been tested until now in civilian buildings. Defense decided to start the tests at the UN Communications Center in Quart de Poblet as it was a facility with numerous technological devices, so it was wanted to test whether the radiation used interfered with the operation of these types of devices. This has not been the case, therefore, given the magnificent results obtained, it was decided to test it also in a hospital setting, taking into account that these sanitary facilities harbor much more intense viral loads than other civil buildings for obvious reasons.
The tests have been carried out successfully this morning at the General Hospital of Valencia with the UVC lamp mounted on Theodor. Now, Defense aims to create a new prototype equipped with LED lamps with UVC radiation, but in the smallest explosion-proof robot that the Spanish Army possesses, the Avenger, weighing 100 kilos compared to Theodor’s 400. By weighing a quarter, it adds versatility, agility and speed to its germicidal efficiency.
The Theodor prototype has proven to be very effective, because it can effectively disinfect the same surface as three people in four hours in 15 minutes. Military sources have explained that this robot has a radius of action of 2.5 meters, so that the diameter of the working area at effective levels is 5 meters.
The great advantage is that, as it is remote-controlled machinery, it can disinfect sensitive and compromised buildings and rooms without human presence. Far or deep ultraviolet radiation is very harmful to humans – it destroys the DNA of the virus, but also affects humans in the skin and eyes – at the levels of surgical disinfection used up to now, which is why its use in this global pandemic it was somewhat in the air.
A team of researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (USA) managed to reduce radiation levels to be effective without compromising human health. The Americans verified its effectiveness in the N1H1 virus, the so-called flu A at the time, which has been precisely the seasonal one this year.
Defense sources have insisted that its prototype has been shown to be effective in destroying SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that is causing the covid-19 pandemic, among other things, because, being a remote control team, it does not require either lower radiation levels.
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