Juganu has developed a lighting fixture that destroys COVID-19 in the room

The smart lighting company Juganu has developed an LED lighting fixture that destroys bacteria and viruses found in closed spaces in the air and on surfaces, including COVID-19 viruses. The unique light fixture, called J. Protect, distributes a combination of visible light that illuminates the room along with ultraviolet light at UVA and UVC frequencies, which can disinfect and destruct pathogens in the room.

The efficacy and safety of the development were tested and verified in a laboratory at Bar-Ilan University and other academic and medical institutions. The new product has received marketing approvals from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Juganu has already sold several hundred units of the new product in a soft launch and is currently conducting several pilots with hospitals in Israel and Mexico. The main target market is the United States. To promote the marketing of the product in the country, Juganu raised about $18 million and will collaborate with large American companies, including Qualcomm, Comcast, and NCR.

The lighting fixture is based on Juganu’s smart LED technology, which allows to “mix” light at different frequencies by designing the chips in the LED surface, thereby adapting the light composition to different needs. For example, the company has developed streetlights that change their shades according to changes in natural light throughout the day, as well as lighting fixtures for greenhouse crops (including cannabis) and for healthcare and medical applications.

Illuminate and disinfect with one lamp

In a conversation with TechTime, the CEO and one of the company’s founders, Eran Ben-Shmuel, explained that the new development is another application based on the company’s core technology. “At the outset of the pandemic, we tried to think about how smart lighting can be used to cope with the crisis. We developed several prototypes, in which we incorporated light in wavelengths that perform disinfection, tested them in a laboratory in Bar-Ilan, and the results were remarkable.”

Virus destruction is accomplished using two areas of the UV light spectrum: UVA light, at 395-400 nm wavelengths, and UVC light, at shorter wavelengths of 365-375 nm. UVA radiation is not dangerous to humans, but it manages to penetrate the outer shell of viruses and bacteria and destroy them.

Experiments [Tests] have shown that UVA lighting manages to eliminate 99.9% of pathogens in a room within a few hours. UVC radiation is more powerful and exterminates pathogens in a room within minutes, but it is dangerous for humans. Therefore, in Juganu’s product, UVC radiation is activated manually, only when the room is empty of people.

A Solution to the problem of infections in hospitals

Although there are disinfectant solutions on the market that are based on UV radiation, the uniqueness of Juganu’s lighting fixture lies in the fact that the UV radiation is combined with normal lighting. Ben-Shmuel: “Because our fixture is also used for normal lighting, it disinfects the space continuously. Also, since it is an overhead lighting that fills the entire volume of the room in a uniform distribution, it also cleans surfaces and not just the air.”

The company is designating the new product for large spaces such as hospitals, shopping centers, restaurants, offices, etc. However, in addition to assisting in the handling the COVID-19 routine, the product addresses another serious problem unrelated to COVID-19: the many infections found in hospitals, which in Israel alone cause the deaths of thousands of people a year. “It is effective for most of the bacteria and viruses. When we tested the fixture in one of the hospitals, the lighting completely cleaned the room of all contaminants.”

Juganu Made the Brazil-Paraguay Border Safer

Juganu from Or Yehuda (near Tel-Aviv) deployed smart city platform along the “Friendship Bridge”, one of the central border crossing points connecting Brazil and Paraguay. Its Foam platform (above), incorporates dynamic lighting sources that change their hues throughout the day in accordance with natural lighting, a communications network, cameras and AI engines. The network includes about 100 lighting posts and 200 cameras.

The 600 yards long “Friendship Bridge” connects the Brazilian city of Foz de Iguaçu with the city of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. The bridge is crossed by about 100,000 people on foot and about 40,000 cars on a daily basis. This border point constitutes a major economic axis that facilitates the transit of goods between the countries, but also a busy smuggling route. Traffic congestion makes it difficult to eradicate the phenomenon and the federal government in Brazil has sought a technological solution to increase supervision and deterrence. Juganu’s network provides lighting for the entire zone, a Wi-Fi network, and AI-based security solution.

Collaboration with the CorSight

The AI ​​engine embedded in Juganu’s modules created by CorSight from Israel which specializes in AI-based face recognition. CorSight is a spin-off of Cortica, a company that developed unique AI technology for autonomous learning in an unsupervised manner. In fact, this technology allows the network to identify people’s faces and cars’ license plates even before they reach the border control. The information is cross-checked in real-time with the databases of the federal police, and creates instant notifications of a suspected person or vehicle. The system was also trained to identify and alert suspicious behaviors.

Similarity between the Lighting and the Communications networks

Established in 2011, Juganu has developed a public LED lighting technology that automatically adjusts the level and hue of light to the changing conditions of natural lighting around it. The company estimates that the type of lighting it produces reduces public electricity consumption by about 80%, while providing a visually comfortable type of lighting that is similar to sunlight and is near-full spectrum.

Based on the structural similarity between lighting networks and communications networks, i.e., the fixed dispersion between every point in order to achieve continuous coverage, Juganu has developed a communications network on top of the lighting poles that provides the needed infrastructure for smart city and safe city services.

Each lighting post consists of two HD cameras, a processing engine and a communication node. The solution enables smart city services on top of streetlights, without the need for cabling or the deployment of optical fibers. The development was done in collaboration with Qualcomm, and the solution includes several of Qualcomm’s chips.

Juganu raised $23 million for Connected Metro LED Lighting

Juganu from Rosh Haayin near Tel aviv, has completed a $23 million financing round led by Viola Growth, with the participation of OurCrowd and undisclosed Mexican investment fund. Based on an innovative LED lighting technology capable of changing light composition, Juganu had developed a new platform for the Smart Cities called “Digital World”. It is an end-to-end solution that utilizes chipsets from Qualcomm Technologies to combine smart lighting, advanced connectivity, and edge processing.

Situated on top metro lighting poles, The Digital World platform offers an AI engine, edge processing architecture, and fast connectivity using the Qualcomm’s Internet Processor IPQ8065,  QCA9984 and QCA9500 Wi-Fi chipsets, and Qualcomm QCS605 system-on-chip (SoC). The platform offers integrated solutions to various smart cities problems, including face recognition, license plate recognition, parking management, suspect tracking, hazard and distress detection, and even deployment of 5G small-cells in public spaces in the near future.

The company said that its “Digital World” platform is already connects lighting fixtures in public spaces, facilitating broadband communications networking of wireless grids, on the back of street lights without requiring expensive fiber optic communication cables. It estimates that the costs of building its communications and lighting-based infrastructure for municipal authorities saves up to 90% of the costs of solutions applied today, and reduces the consumption of public electricity by up to 80%.