In hotels and beyond, UV light robots and lamps could help protect against coronavirus

For guests checking into a high-profile California hotel, they might be staying in rooms that have been sanitized in part by an unusual new staff member: a three-foot-tall robot named Kennedy.

Kennedy is among the Beverly Hilton Hotel's newest lines of defense against coronavirus. It's a machine designed to kill the virus by flashing intense, germ-killing ultraviolet light through the room, after the room has undergone the usual cleaning by Kennedy's human coworkers.

"We really shifted our focus to researching and investing in state-of-the-art hospital-grade technologies to further protect our team members and guests more than we already were," David Alagem, one of the hotel's executives, told ABC News. In addition to the rooms themselves, guests' luggage and packages will also be sanitized using the UV light robots, Alagem said.

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