EarthSense Begins Creating Autonomous Disinfecting Robots to Fight Transmission of COVID-19

EnterpriseWorks startup EarthSense has received accelerated funding from the National Science Foundation to support the development of autonomous sanitizing robots that can help reduce the transmission of COVID-19, the company announced on June 3.

By using innovative robotics and machine learning, EarthSense plans to have robots autonomously build maps of hospital rooms and disinfect them with Ultra Violet (UV) light. EarthSense autonomous sanitizing robots can have applications in offices, schools, and other public areas to reduce community transmission and help relax social distancing measures sooner.

The $256,000 Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer Award will engage EarthSense as well as other University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty experts in robotics. 

Girish Chowdhary, co-founder and CTO of EarthSense, and Donald Biggar, Willet Faculty Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said, “We felt driven to respond to this staggering crisis by accelerating our plan to create products beyond agriculture. We are making every effort to rapidly deploy our autonomous COVID sanitizing robots. The accelerated funding from the National Science Foundation is a critical validation of our approach to help manage COVID-19 and future diseases.”

EarthSense was recently selected for the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator and received a Phase II SBIR award.

EarthSense was founded in 2016 by Chinmay Soman and Girish Chowdhary. The company develops ultra-compact autonomous robots. TerraSentia, its first robot, is revolutionizing agriculture by improving the quantity, accuracy, cost, and speed of in-field plant trait data collection.

Visit EarthSense’s website to learn more.