COVID-Bot: UV-C Based Autonomous Sanitizing Robotic Platform for COVID-19.

This paper presents the design and implementation of COVID-Bot, an open-source robotic platform for sanitizing single plant environments such as offices, houses, apartments, among others. This development seeks to create a tool that contributes to the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, from a low-cost and easy-to-replicate robot, which disinfects surfaces through type C ultraviolet radiation. The platform is based on a differential robotic base, an RGB-D camera, a tracking camera, three UV-C lamps, and an embedded computer running the ROS-based control software.

Embedded Fiber Sensors to Monitor Temperature and Strain of Polymeric Parts Fabricated by Additive Manufacturing and Reinforced with NiTi Wires.

This paper focuses on three main issues regarding Material Extrusion (MEX) Additive Manufacturing (AM) of thermoplastic composites reinforced by pre-functionalized continuous Nickel-Titanium (NiTi) wires: (i) Evaluation of the effect of the MEX process on the properties of the pre-functionalized NiTi, (ii) evaluation of the mechanical and thermal behavior of the composite material during usage, (iii) the inspection of the parts by Non-Destructive Testing (NDT). For this purpose, an optical fiber sensing network, based on fiber Bragg grating and a cascaded optical fiber sensor, was successfully embedded during the 3D printing of a polylactic acid (PLA) matrix reinforced by NiTi wires. Thermal and mechanical perturbations were successfully registered as a consequence of thermal and mechanical stimuli.