The Breezy One mobile robot that provides autonomous disinfection services at airports and other large facilities now has a baby brother, Breezy Blue, to disinfect small, compact spaces, such as inside ambulances, school buses and classrooms.
Albuquerque-based Build with Robots publicly unveiled the new minibot Wednesday morning at its Downtown headquarters, where company founder and CEO Chris Ziomek demonstrated the new technology for local media.
Like its older, bigger brother, the Breezy Blue is wired with smart technology for automated service, with LED lights and sound alerts when the minibot begins its disinfection routine, spray a mild mixture of household chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide to create a light mist that settles. over all the nooks and crannies of closed spaces. It can be programmed remotely for regular daily fogging and turned on for additional spraying when needed.
“It’s a portable device that’s easy to set up and use,” Ziomek told reporters during the demonstration. “You can take it wherever you want and leave it in an ambulance, a classroom or a door. You just push the button, the LED lights flash and it goes on.”
Unlike its older sibling, Breezy One – which is a much larger, heavier, rectangular device programmed to autonomously roll on wheels around large facilities – Breezy Blue is stationary. It weighs just 15 pounds – 23 pounds when full of disinfectant – so users can grab it via a handle on top to put it away when needed.
And, unlike the $50,000 price tag for industrial services provided by the Breezy One, the minibot only costs $2,500.
That will attract a much wider customer base than the original disinfection machine, which is currently deployed in about a dozen schools, in various airports, such as the Albuquerque International Sunport, and the University of New Mexico Pit. There are a total of about 20 Breezy One machines now constantly cruising the areas for continuous disinfection.
In contrast, the company has pre-sold 80-plus Breezy Blue units since it began deploying initial minibot prototypes for customer testing and use last summer.
“It’s now disinfecting fire stations and ambulances in Rio Rancho,” Ziomek told the Journal. “The Albuquerque Ambulance Service and Arizona fire stations use it, and various schools disinfect their buildings and buses with it. Three different schools now have Breezy Blue in every classroom.
McCurdy Charter School in Española, for example, has ordered 33 Breezy Blues that will begin arriving next week, said the school’s K-12 operations director, Ian Maestas.
“We will spread the first wave to all ground floors and the next wave to our second floor,” Maestas told the Journal. “We started early models at the beginning of the school year in September. It made everything easier, it allowed us to sanitize areas without doing anything manually.”
McCurdy has over 500 students spread across three buildings. Besides placing a unit in each classroom, it has units in the school kitchen, and movable carts for gym locker rooms.
That brings peace of mind to teachers, Maestas said.
“They believe in them,” he said. “They often use it, like when a child coughs, to prevent the spread of germs.”
The disinfectant used in both Breezy bots – Breezy BioCare RTU – is based on a formula originally developed by Sandia National Laboratories and licensed to Arizona-based SpectraShield Technologies, which has partnered with Build with Robots to provide the disinfectant as a “ready-to-use,” or RTU formula, which requires no mixing and has a long shelf life, Ziomek told the Journal. It is certified by the Green Clean Institute and approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency, with third-party lab testing showing 99.99% effectiveness against the coronavirus and many other pathogens.
“It fogged the whole place and got on all the surfaces and fabrics in the whole room,” Ziomek said. “Sensors show that the disinfectant sits in the air for hours and continues to disinfect the room.”
Build with Robots collects data on school nurse office visits and overall absenteeism to measure the impact of reducing illness, said the company’s Business Development Representative Christian Slough. A full year of data is required by facilities currently deploying the new Breezy Blue model, but schools already using Breezy One, such as St. “We’ve seen trends of a 41% reduction in nurse office visits,” Slough told the Journal.
Build with Robots is a homegrown Albuquerque startup that launched in 2017. It has raised $6M in local venture investment to date and currently employs about 20 people.
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