Chadshare
Your suggestion some time back that
room disinfection could be a task for one of Nanosonics new products gets some added credibility from the following linked US patent application:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/WO2017185138A1.html
The patent application was filed on 28 April 2017 and published on 2 November 2017. The applicant entity was Saban Ventures Pty Limited, 14 Mars Road, Lane Cove, NSW, 2066 (the address of Nanosonics Pty Ltd), and among the 4 inventors listed is Ron Weinberger who was the principal inventor of the trophon disinfection unit.
The title of the patent application is innocuous enough - "An Autonomous Disinfectant System".
From my reading of the application, the key problems that the inventors have sought to address are the expense, unreliability and in particular lack of safety efficacy associated with manual systems of UV light disinfection for enclosed room spaces.
Implicit in the application is that disinfection of a room space cannot be undertaken using UV light when a live human being is present.
Explicit in the application is that the inventors autonomous disinfectant system enables an automated approach to UV disinfection of an enclosed room space through use of an array of sensors which can: detect (among many other things) human (or animal) movement: discontinue the disinfection process when such movement is detected; continue the disinfection process when such movement ceases; detect and adjust for shadowing of the UV light which could otherwise lead to sub-optimal disinfection outcomes in a manual system.
The application states that the systems and methods described in the submission are mainly directed to use in hospitals or healthcare facilities, but could also be used in veterinary clinics where the sensor features are said to be equally effective in sensing the presence of live human beings or live animals generally. It goes on to suggest that embodiments of the invention could also be used in industries where environmental contamination of enclosed spaces may be a concern - such as food processing and food packaging.
Another interesting advantage of the autonomous disinfectant system highlighted by the inventors is what they call "opportunistic disinfection" whereby, if required, an enclosed hospital room can be disinfected during any period of human absence (eg when a patient or any other person leaves the room to go, for example, to rehabilitation, or even to the bathroom, as the system sensors are designed to constantly monitor a targetted room.
Now, what's been highlighted above may all amount to nothing when it comes to guessing whether it relates to one of the two new products that NAN is looking to commercialise during the next 18 months, but if nothing else, it is interesting that Ron W and his development team have obviously been putting some of their time into a technical process for delivering more effective UV light disinfection of potentially contaminated enclosed spaces. In that regard, I had blinkeredly assumed that all development work was being solely focussed on opportunities for leveraging the trophon system - but it appears that's not necessarily the case.
zeno9
(20min delay)