UV Disinfection Robot History and ABB Robots

A UV disinfection robot rolls into an empty hospital room, switches on its lamps and floods every surface it can see with ultraviolet light. Hospitals have used them since the 2010s, airports and gyms followed during the pandemic, and in September 2026 another startup raised money to build them. This post goes back to how nurses cleaned wards by hand and to the first germicidal lamps in operating rooms, then follows the mobile UV towers of Xenex and UVD Robots. It covers this year's news, the warning from infection prevention experts that the room still has to be cleaned, and where ABB mobile robots and cobots could fit.

A UV disinfection robot on display in Heathrow Terminal 3, one of the robots the airport uses to clean its terminals, 2021. Photo: Mx. Granger / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

From scrubbed wards to germicidal lamps

For most of the history of hospitals, disinfection meant people with soap, water and time. A photo album kept by a nurse at Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg shows the summer cleaning of a ward around 1920. Nurses and helpers emptied the room, inspected every bed and piece of linen, replaced what was damaged, varnished the floor and washed the curtains. The ward then stood empty for a month. Care like that happened once a year, while cleaning between patients was quicker and depended on how much time the staff had.

Summer cleaning of an emptied ward at Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg, around 1920. Photo: unknown, from the album of nurse Ester Cyrus, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Science found a second tool in sunlight. In 1878 the British researchers Downes and Blunt reported that sunlight, and especially its shorter wavelengths, stopped bacteria from growing. By the late 1920s researchers had measured which ultraviolet wavelengths killed bacteria best, with a peak near 265 nanometers, and mercury lamps that emit at 254 nanometers came close. In 1935 William F. Wells showed that UV light could kill microbes in the air. A year later Duke University's hospital installed high-intensity UV lamps in an operating room, and the rate of infections after surgery fell from 11.62 percent to 0.24 percent.

A laboratory flow bench lit by its UV lamp, used to decontaminate the bench between uses. Photo: Newbie / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Wells went on to test UV lamps against measles in Philadelphia schools from 1937 to 1941, and labs still use UV to decontaminate their clean benches. Mobile units came much later. Xenex, which infectious diseases epidemiologist Mark Stibich helped found, built a portable pulsed xenon UV device, and in October 2014 Langley Air Force Base in Virginia became the first US Air Force site to get one. In Denmark, Blue Ocean Robotics and Odense University Hospital began work on a self-driving UV robot in 2014. Their company, UVD Robots, was founded in 2016 and started selling robots in 2018.

A Xenex manager demonstrates a germ-zapping UV robot to airmen at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, October 2014. Photo: Staff Sgt. Antoinette Gibson / U.S. Air Force via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

UV disinfection robots in hospitals and airports now

COVID-19 turned these machines into a fast-selling product. In February 2020 the Chinese medical supplier Sunay Healthcare Supply signed an agreement with UVD Robots, and the first robots were flown to Chinese hospitals that same week. Airports and gyms bought them too. In November 2020 a US Army garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, put UV robots in a fitness center and a command building, and Heathrow Airport later showed one of its terminal robots to passengers in Terminal 3. A 2021 review in Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control warned that the robots do not replace manual cleaning, and that shadows limit what they reach.

A UV robot disinfects the fitness center at Clay Kaserne, Wiesbaden, Germany, November 2020. Photo: U.S. Army Garrison Wiesbaden via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

That warning came back this summer. On 21 August 2026 Infection Control Today reported on a panel at the Exchange26 AHE Education and Solutions Summit in New Orleans, where experts said shadows, distance, positioning and exposure time mean UV-C cannot make up for a surface that was not cleaned properly, so the room still has to be cleaned first. Investors have kept funding the field anyway. In September 2026 Haystack Robotics of Portland, Oregon, raised 3.95 million dollars in a Series A round led by Agadia for Violet AI, a UV-C robot that moves through buildings without being mapped first, aimed at hospitals, senior living, schools, hotels and gyms.

A UV robot flashes UV-C light in an intensive care room at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, December 2015. Photo: Marcy Sanchez / U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB does not make a UV disinfection robot, and no ABB UV project has been reported. Its existing robots point to how the shadow problem could be tackled. A Flexley Mover AMR finds its way with 3D Visual SLAM and could carry a lamp mast from room to room, much like the hospital transport robots in our post on hospital delivery logistics. A GoFa CRB 15000 cobot on top could hold a small UV-C head close to bed rails, keyboards and door handles that a fixed tower lights only from a distance. Paths and safety zones for a cell like that would be planned in RobotStudio before the robot ever enters a ward.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604, which navigates with 3D Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

What UV robots must prove next

The first open question is proof. Studies cited in the 2021 review found that only about half of surfaces in hospital rooms were cleaned well enough between patients, which is the gap UV robots promise to close. Showing that a robot actually lowers infections in a given hospital is much harder than showing it kills spores in a lab test. The experts at Exchange26 urged hospitals to check FDA authorization, manufacturer claims and the infection problem they want to solve before they buy, and to measure results afterwards.

A GoFa cobot at ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

Safety sets hard limits. UV-C light harms skin and eyes, so most robots work in empty rooms behind warning signs, and staff must clear the space and close the door before each cycle. That costs time on busy wards. Cost is the other barrier, because a robot competes with a cleaning team that hospitals need anyway. For homes, small UV boxes and wands are already sold, but a robot that disinfects a whole house while a family lives there would have to solve the exposure problem first.

A warning sign keeps people out while a UV robot runs in a hospital room at William Beaumont Army Medical Center. Photo: Marcy Sanchez / U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Skills will decide how well the robots are used. Environmental services teams need training to prepare rooms, place the robot where shadows are smallest and record each cycle, and infection preventionists need data they can trust. Over the next few years, robots that combine navigation, sensing and arm-mounted lamps could make the process more repeatable. For engineers coming from factories, the hospital is a harder place than a robot cell: doors, beds and people move, and every cycle has to be documented.

Moving a GoFa arm by hand, the way a position is taught without writing code. Photo: ABB

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