A Texas company markets a robot capable of destroying the Ebola virus in a room in less than five minutes.
He could be of great help. A Texan company, Xenex, brought out his virus destroyer robot. Called Little Moe, it destroys all bacteria and viruses in a room in five to ten minutes.
Marketed since 2010 for an amount of 80,000 euros, Little Moe already equips 250 hospitals in the United States, as explained by the American site Mashable. It emits ultra-violet rays which damage the DNA of viruses, and prevents them from mutating and reproducing.
Rays 25,000 times more powerful than the sun
“It’s very difficult to clean every square inch in a room. The robot does it with simple light rays » says Mark Stibich, the inventor of the robot. In fact, Little Moe saves precious time and limits the risk of contagion when disinfecting hospital rooms.
Destroying viruses in a room with UV rays is nothing new. On the other hand, the process by which the robot achieves it receives all the attention. It no longer works with mercury, but xenon, a non-toxic gas. “The light emitted by xenon is approximately 25,000 times more powerful than the UV emitted by the Sun”, specifies Mark Stibich. The disinfection of the room no longer lasts an hour, as it did with mercury, but less than ten minutes.
>> Watch Little Moe’s presentation video:
“The future of the fight against Ebola”
For Ebola, this time frame could even be less. Indeed, only two minutes would be enough to destroy the virus from a contaminated room, according to the CBS Dallas website, which makes say to its designers that this robot would be “the future of the fight against Ebola”.
Of course, the robot does not cure people with the Ebola virus, but only decontaminates the rooms in which they are. The Dallas hospital which received the infected Liberian also acquired it, but the patient has since died.
Little Moe robot disinfects a hospital room (Xenex)
The Little Moe robot also disinfects footballers’ sports equipment in high schools (Xenex)
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