Coronavirus killing ultraviolet light equipped floor robot kills germs in grout and on floor and also has moving brushes that clean dirt from tiles and grout.

Alcohol or other germ killers would spray ahead of the robot to kill wet, germ-rich dirty grout, Brush will clean dirt filled grout.

Edit 2020 4 6 UV light could be detachable to make it easier to hold up the UV light by hand to shine germ killing UV rays on door handles, water faucets, light switches, tabletops and other things humans commonly touch.

Edit 2020 4 13 Opinions on whether you can kill Corona Virus with a safe UV is conflicting. Search for "Ultraviolet light can kill the novel corona virus" or "How to Use Ultraviolet Light to Kill Corona virus on Your iPhone." But written on written on 2020 3 27 is, "There’s only one type of UV that can reliably inactivate Covid-19 – and it’s extremely dangerous. You would literally be frying people,”

Edit 2020 4 15 Safe UV works after all. Search Google for "UV light may protect us from the coronavirus"
-- Sunstone, Mar 17 2020

Is wet grout known to harbor germs especially? Do other methods of disinfection not work well on it?

Vacuum-cleaning robots with built-in UV lamps that shine on the floor are baked, but probably not WKTE, because they're impractical and therefore uncommon. UV requires a long exposure time to disinfect, which is not provided by a robot that's moving along. Also, in those existing robots, the lamp was about an inch wide, while the robot was maybe 12 inches wide, so only 1/12 of the floor got any UV, let alone enough exposure to be worthwhile.

(I had been envisioning a UV lamp hung on four ropes attached to computer-controlled winches at the corners of the workshop, to move around automatically when the shop was unoccupied, until I looked it up and learned that it would probably take a week (just a guess) to do a cursory pass of the whole workshop with the little UV lamp I have, if I wanted enough exposure time on any given surface to do much good.)

You could use a mopping or floor-washing robot, and fill it with 70% alcohol or another disinfectant liquid. Alcohol might evaporate too quickly even at 70%. According to the EPA's list, quaternary ammonium compounds seem to be good against SARS-CoV-2. Sodium hypochlorite (household bleach) too, IIRC.

What might work better is an ozone-floor-treating robot. Ozone should get into the grout nicely. The trouble with using ozone for general disinfection is that it's ineffective in doses that aren't also effective against humans. But, with a robot, you could equip the robot with a skirt and keep the ozone under the robot, in a much higher concentration. And if the ozone does escape, the volume will be small, so it will be diluted in the full volume of the room to a safe concentration.
-- notexactly, Mar 20 2020


Thanks for doing half of the math on the mitigation strategy I proposed. I did none.
-- notexactly, Mar 20 2020


You have an imaginary kitchen ?

If your imagination is vivid enough to actually allow you to prepare and cook food, it's a really good idea.
-- 8th of 7, Mar 20 2020


You'd be fine if you only cooked carrots, parsnips, swede and turnips after dicing them into symmetrical rectilinear portions, thus deriving the Cubed Root vegetables of unity...

Just leave the imaginary part on the side if your plate if you don't like it.
-- 8th of 7, Mar 21 2020


So not an army of Maxwell demons with UV powered chainsaws.
-- wjt, Mar 22 2020



random, halfbakery