Ultra-Wideband Positioning Sensor with Application to an Autonomous Ultraviolet-C Disinfection Vehicle

Bibliographic Details
Title: Ultra-Wideband Positioning Sensor with Application to an Autonomous Ultraviolet-C Disinfection Vehicle
Authors: Shih-Ping Huang, Jin-Feng Neo, Yu-Yao Chen, Chien-Bang Chen, Ting-Wei Wu, Zheng-An Peng, Wei-Ting Tsai, Chong-Yi Liou, Wang-Huei Sheng, Shau-Gang Mao
Source: Sensors, Vol 21, Iss 15, p 5223 (2021)
Publisher Information: MDPI AG, 2021.
Publication Year: 2021
Collection: LCC:Chemical technology
Subject Terms: COVID-19, Ultraviolet-C, ultra-wideband, disinfection vehicle, wireless positioning, Chemical technology, TP1-1185
More Details: Due to the COVID-19 virus being highly transmittable, frequently cleaning and disinfecting facilities is common guidance in public places. However, the more often the environment is cleaned, the higher the risk of cleaning staff getting infected. Therefore, strong demand for sanitizing areas in automatic modes is undoubtedly expected. In this paper, an autonomous disinfection vehicle with an Ultraviolet-C (UVC) lamp is designed and implemented using an ultra-wideband (UWB) positioning sensor. The UVC dose for 90% inactivation of the reproductive ability of COVID-19 is 41.7 J/m2, which a 40 W UVC lamp can achieve within a 1.6 m distance for an exposure time of 30 s. With this UVC lamp, the disinfection vehicle can effectively sterilize in various scenarios. In addition, the high-accuracy UWB positioning system, with the time difference of arrival (TDOA) algorithm, is also studied for autonomous vehicle navigation in indoor environments. The number of UWB tags that use a synchronization protocol between UWB anchors can be unlimited. Moreover, this proposed Gradient Descent (GD), which uses Taylor method, is a high-efficient algorithm for finding the optimal position for real-time computation due to its low error and short calculating time. The generalized traversal path planning procedure, with the edge searching method, is presented to improve the efficiency of autonomous navigation. The average error of the practical navigation demonstrated in the meeting room is 0.10 m. The scalability of the designed system to different application scenarios is also discussed and experimentally demonstrated. Hence, the usefulness of the proposed UWB sensor applied to UVC disinfection vehicles to prevent COVID-19 infection is verified by employing it to sterilize indoor environments without human operation.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
ISSN: 1424-8220
Relation: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/15/5223; https://doaj.org/toc/1424-8220
DOI: 10.3390/s21155223
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/b7435aea7aab4bfca64c586abdb661fc
Accession Number: edsdoj.b7435aea7aab4bfca64c586abdb661fc
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals
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More Details
ISSN:14248220
DOI:10.3390/s21155223
Published in:Sensors
Language:English