Hungarian-Developed Robots Could Conquer Europe

The commissioning of around one hundred new autonomous cleaning robots developed in-house has begun as a result of the work of B+N Reference Plc.'s team of Hungarian engineers. Members of the previous series have been proving their worth for years at Budapest's Liszt Ferenc International Airport, in the capital's metro stations, among others, and are also testing robots that can cooperate with humans in Poland, Slovenia and Romania.

A current research project of the team aims to rapidly detect the presence and sudden increase in the number of epidemiologically dangerous pathogens, even on public transport, based on samples taken on public transport.

The first series of robots developed in this country went into operation in 2019, mainly in sites with large contiguous areas. In addition to Budapest airport and metro stations, there are currently around 50 of these robots working in many domestic railway stations, as well as in several sports facilities (e.g. Puskás Arena, Groupama Arena, MVM Dome) and hospitals.

This year, a prototype of a UV-C disinfection robot using artificial intelligence, also developed in-house, was completed and will be ready for production after the necessary tests. The need for UV-C robots with advanced orientation capabilities has been created by the need to quickly and efficiently clean places and facilities, such as hospitals, where all pathogens, including resistant pathogens, need to be destroyed by disinfection, especially those visited by large crowds and where there is a high risk of infection.

A further important activity of the R&D team is the development of an analysis system based on the laboratory analysis of heritable material in hospital cleaning samples, which is integrated into the hospital cleaning process and can detect pathogens. This method could offer the possibility of rapid detection of infectious colonies, indicating an increased risk of infection, reducing the number of hospital-acquired infections, but could also be used in office buildings and public transport, providing important information on emerging pathogens.