Robots fight COVID-19 invasion with ultraviolet rays at London station

01:20

Robots that can kill COVID-19 with ultraviolet light are now being used at one of the UK's busiest train stations, London St Pancras International, as transport hubs turn to automation to restore customer confidence while traveling.

The use of UV light to kill the coronavirus has already been popularized in hospitals, where it has been employed to sterilize operating theaters.

But now the technology, fitted to automated machines, is helping keep commuters safe in the British capital.

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Certain waves of UV light can be employed to attack viruses by warping the structure of their genetic material, thus preventing replication.

This method can kill nearly 100 percent of bacteria and viruses – including the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19 – on surfaces and in the surrounding air in minutes. That means the machines in St Pancras can cover large areas of the station, without any need for chemical disinfectant.

"In the present climate, it's quite difficult to keep this station clean at 'high-touchpoint' areas," said Jay Newton, head of stations engineering and operations for the High Speed 1 channel tunnel rail link.

"What the new technology will allow us to do is have our staff focus in on the high touchpoints so that the automatic machines can then go and clean the mundane areas," he added. "And that allows us to ensure that we're doing exactly what we need to do in the current climate."

04:48

Business at St Pancras, the London terminus of the Eurostar link to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam and a major London Underground thoroughfare, has been hit hard by the pandemic.

The station's 34.6 million entries and exits from March 2018 to March 2019 made it the country's ninth-busiest station. However, the Office of Rail and Road has said the coronavirus has caused a dramatic reduction in rail usage.

And stations have suffered another blow after prime minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday that people should work from home again where possible to tackle a second wave of the virus.

"The main thing for us is to get the confidence of customers," said Newton. "We're the first train station to bring this type of technology in because we want to allow people to use a train station with confidence, use our retail units with confidence, and slowly get back to a normal way."

Video editing: Steve Chappell

Source(s): Reuters