  The paper discusses how robots enable occupant-safe continuous protection for
students when schools reopen. Conventionally, fixed air filters are not used as
a key pandemic prevention method for public indoor spaces because they are
unable to trap the airborne pathogens in time in the entire room. However, by
combining the mobility of a robot with air filtration, the efficacy of cleaning
up the air around multiple people is largely increased. A disinfection co-robot
prototype is thus developed to provide continuous and occupant-friendly
protection to people gathering indoors, specifically for students in a
classroom scenario. In a static classroom with students sitting in a grid
pattern, the mobile robot is able to serve up to 14 students per cycle while
reducing the worst-case pathogen dosage by 20%, and with higher robustness
compared to a static filter. The extent of robot protection is optimized by
tuning the passing distance and speed, such that a robot is able to serve more
people given a threshold of worst-case dosage a person can receive.
