Purdue University researchers built this bizarre crawling robot baby to
study how real infants kick up dirt and bacteria from carpet that they
then inhale. Engineer Brandon Boor and his colleagues ran the robot over
carpet samples removed from people’s homes and then analyzed the
particulates that were stirred up. Turns out that the particle
concentration is as much as 20 times greater than higher up in the room
where we adults breathe. That isn’t necessarily bad though, Boor says.
“Many studies have shown that inhalation exposure to microbes and
allergen-carrying particles in that portion of life plays a significant
role in both the development of, and protection from, asthma and
allergic diseases,” says Boor, an assistant professor of civil
engineering and environmental and ecological engineering. “There are
studies that have shown that being exposed to a high diversity and
concentration of biological materials may reduce the prevalence of
asthma and allergies later in life.”
