United Airlines using giant robots to to coat planes with germ-killing spray

The newest addition to United Airlines’ COVID-19 cleaning team is a 100-pound germ-killing robot.

MicroSonic’s NovaRover machine will soon be spraying anti-microbial chemicals on United planes at 10 American airports, the airline announced Wednesday.

NovaRover “is designed to apply a super fine mist… that coats all surfaces in a 12-foot radius with a single spray,” United said in a statement.

The robot features six nozzles pointing in six different directions, on a pole about six feet above the ground.

“It actually creates a very very super fine mist, which gets a better even coverage of the coating over all the surfaces of the airplane,” United’s Director of Operations Policy, Scott Hildebrand, says in a video demonstration.

The germ-blasting chemical, Zoono Microbe Shield, “forms a protective barrier that resembles a bed of microscopic pins,” according to the video demo.

Those pins “attract bacteria and germs, puncturing them on contact,” it explains.

Airplanes will get a once-over with NovaRover every seven days — on top of United’s existing cleaning regiment, United said.

But the efficacy of the Zoono Microbe Shield is uncertain, despite its creator’s claims.