The spread of coronavirus around the world and particularly in Europe has made the use of unmanned technologies more vital. In this regard, robots could be a solution for cleaning and disinfecting trains or stations. Where else in the rail sector they may be applied?
Robot welder
Another area for using robots in the rail sector is the manufacture of rolling stock. To this end, several companies have already installed welding robots to facilitate and improve the producing process. Such kinds of robots are not androids, they look like automated machines. In 2019 two manufacturers deploy the welding robots at their plants. The Alstom’s production facility in Le Creusot, France, was equipped with a special robot developed by the French company Farman for automatic welding of steel or stainless steel parts and handles bulky parts with a maximum weight up to a tonne and a maximum length up to five metres. Alstom is using this solution in producing the parts of the new-generation RER and TGV high-speed trains.
Robot guide
Several airports in the world, including Schiphol in the Netherlands, have already tested robots that assist passengers in navigating around the terminals. The railway companies also try to keep up with the trend. At the end of 2015, French railway operator SNCF has deployed several android robots at the train stations. They were named Pepper and were developed by SoftBank Robotics, the French subsidiary of the Japanese technology company SoftBank Group.
Each android was designed to interact with humans: they are able to recognise the basic human emotions due to special perception modules, to talk and even to gesture owing to touch sensors, LEDs, microphones and so on. The set of infrared sensors, bumpers, an inertial unit, 2D and 3D cameras, sonars provide the robots with the opportunity for omnidirectional and autonomous navigation. In 2018 the Pepper androids were deployed at the London St Pancras station, the busiest one in the United Kingdom, for informing the passengers of Eurostar trains.