In an effort to fight Covid-19, Anant Kumar Rajput, a B. Tech student (Mechanical Engineering) at Lovely Professional University (LPU) under the guidance of Asst. Prof. Mandeep Singh and Project Officer, Ruhul Amin Choudhury from Student Research & Project Cell at Lovely Professional University, has developed a portable UV Racket which can disinfect almost everything ranging from groceries, e-commerce packets, keys, currency notes to even vehicles. All one needs to do is to wave the racket over them.
One needs to wave the racket on the surface, holding it at a distance of 4-5 inches from the object for 60 seconds to disinfect it. The racket has been fitted with a timer which beeps once 60 seconds are over. Once the disinfected item is sanitized with the UV rays, one can touch/ hold the product immediately and use it as per his convenience. The 80 cm long racket comprises of an oval head which has UVC tubes embedded on the one side. On the other side, it is covered with a metallic sheet to shield the person holding it from bodily contact with UVC rays. The racket is also equipped with an object movement identification feature, the moment human intervention is observed by the racket, it shuts the sanitizing process to avoid any harm to the human skin.
The racket can run either on electricity or via an inbuilt rechargeable battery which can be recharged within 30 minutes and can provide power for 15 minutes. LPU has filed a patent for the racket and is now looking for industrial partners for its commercialisation. Once commercialised, the racket would be available for Rs. 1000/- (approx.).
Ashok Mittal, Chancellor, Lovely Professional University said, "We are proud of the research team behind this portable UV Racket. The team has been working tirelessly to come up with innovative solutions to keep up the fight against COVID19. I believe, once commercialised, this racket will have great potential in the market."
The UV Racket has been developed under the aegis of the USD 1 million fund set up by LPU to combat the outbreak of Covid-19. Researchers from LPU have built several products over the past few weeks to fight COVID-19 including an IoT device called ‘KAWACH’ to promote safe social distancing, a smart dustbin for contactless waste collection and disposal in hospitals and a COVID-19 dashboard to help people track and study the spread of COVID-19 across the globe.
