Robots are disinfecting hotels during the pandemic. It’s the tip of a hospitality revolution
One day last summer, the newest member of YOTEL Boston's housekeeping team pulled up to work in a big crate.
"It was an imposing box," recalled general manager Trish Berry, who watched as a team of robotics professionals then unpacked the employee, a tall cleaning bot nicknamed "Vi-YO-Let." After getting programmed to understand the property's floor plan, Vi-YO-Let (pronounced like "violet") began roaming like a germ-zapping Roomba — becoming, in the process, one of the first ultraviolet bots to arrive in a United States hotel.
Of course, Vi-YO-Let is mostly plastic. The bot does not have an official gender or even a personality, per a YOTEL spokesperson, though robots are sometimes assigned unfortunate stereotypical genders. Berry uses "she" pronouns based on her own relationship working with Vi-YO-Let, who has become an important colleague over the past six months.
While Vi-YO-Let, the product of a partnership with Denmark-based UVD Robots, might play cute tunes and light up as she moves, she has a serious job: disinfecting the air and surfaces around her. And she does so remarkably well: Her array of UV lights, which look like a bundle of lightsabers, kill more than 99 percent of viruses and bacteria, including the coronavirus.