A shopping mall in Singapore is deploying a newly developed smart robot to fight the novel coronavirus, not with chemicals – but with light. While spraying has become the norm in many places around the world, the robot uses ultraviolet lamps to disinfectant not only surfaces, but tricky-to-reach crevices and even the air. According to Derrick Yap, whose firm, PBA Group, developed the Sunburst UV Bot, the novel coronavirus pandemic presented an opportunity to test out a robot for a role that was “dangerous, dull and dirty”. “It’s dangerous because UVC shouldn’t be deployed when there’s humans around,” he said, referring to the short-wave germicidal type of ultraviolet radiation. “Dull – because you keep on going to a place and you keep on doing a repeated task, and dirty, because of the COVID-19,” he said.