An ambulance service in Albuquerque got the chance to help Build With Robots test its new product. Now it plans to continue using Breezy Blue in the future.
Albuquerque Ambulance Service, a nonprofit ambulance service affiliated with Presbyterian Healthcare Services, started using a prototype of Breezy Blue in November. It's the newest product from Build With Robots, an Albuquerque-based disinfection robotics company.
AAS, which has about 20 full-time logistics employees, was one of several clients that Build With Robots partnered with to use three Breezy Blue prototypes and test its capabilities to disinfect areas up to 30,000 cubic feet.
Yesenia Estrada-Garlie, the logistics commander for Albuquerque Ambulance Service, said her logistics employees use Breezy Blue to disinfect the back of ambulances before completing a full "terminal clean."
Breezy Blue is placed on a cart at an angle and sprays disinfectant for about 15 seconds — the amount of time it takes to clean an area the size of an ambulance — before closing the door.
"The Breezy fogger fogs the unit, and then we let it disinfect for 15 minutes before we pull it through the wash bay," Estrada-Garlie told Albuquerque Business First. "Our logistics employees really, really appreciate that, because it helps them stay safer."
AAS readies between 20 to 40 ambulances in a 24-hour shift, depending on how often the ambulances are used.
Depending on the size of the area they need to disinfect, users can adjust the amount of time the unit activates its sprayer. And, users can control multiple Breezy Blue units using one remote, Build With Robots' CEO Chris Ziomek told members of the media and others who gathered on Wednesday at an event at the company's Downtown Albuquerque headquarters.
And the ambulance service plans to continue using the full Breezy Blue model, both at its main facility and at remote sites in the future, Estrada-Garlie said.
"This helped us go that extra mile to make sure that we're really going in there and disinfecting the entire ambulance," she said referring to the robot. . "The terminal clean can't always get everywhere viruses can hide, and the fog allows for that. It helps us get all those nooks and crannies."
Breezy Blue is one-eighth the size of Build With Robots' first product, Breezy One, which is an autonomous mobile disinfectant with a tank size of eight gallons. Breezy Blue is also made to be more portable, so that users can either use it as a "fixture" in a room or move it around to different areas to disinfect, according to a news release from the company.
Ziomek said that much of the technology behind the two products is the same. Both use Build With Robots' Breezy BioCare disinfectant, a hydrogen peroxide-based chemistry developed through Sandia National Laboratories. And both have the same fogging technology to create aerosolized particles and the same Cloud platform to collect data.
The electronics and the mechanical design are where the two products differ, Ziomek said. Because of its smaller size and different materials, he said Breezy Blue could be manufactured at larger scales.
"These are made for really large-scale production," Ziomek said about Breezy Blue. "So thousands or tens of thousands of units."
Build With Robots is assembling Breezy Blue on-site to test each unit in a controlled environment. That ensures the units can meet Federal Communications Commission requirements, Ziomek said, adding the company can build about five per day.
Each Breezy Blue unit costs $2,499.99. Ziomek said that Build With Robots has pre-orders for around 80 units.
Looking ahead, Build With Robots wants to make sure that people besides just the cleaning staff who use the products know that they're working, Ziomek said.
"The next thing is how do we get the end users, the people who visit those facilities to see that?" Ziomek said. "That's what we're working on."
He said that Build With Robots wants to do that using sensor technology and smart devices that it currently employs in its Breezy One and Breezy Blue products.
"It's our mission to make disinfection visible so that people do it," Ziomek said. "We have seen that when you disinfect communities stay more healthy. How do we get people to practice the best practices more regularly? It's by, we believe, making it more visible."
This story has been updated to correct the number of full-time logistics employees that work for Albuquerque Ambulance Service.
