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What’s cooler than a self-driving cab? Answer: a self-driving cab that kills Covid pathogens with UV light.
In wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, a self-driving start-up called Voyage is kitting out autonomous minivans with ultraviolet lighting to sterilise cab interiors between rides.
The new UV lighting system is an adaption of stock technology used in ambulances to neutralise virus pathogens, fungus, and bacteria between deployments and is set to be installed in Voyage minivans across several US states.
These new vehicles will be primarily used to transport elderly folk throughout big retirement communities in California and Florida, with Voyage rightly pointing to senior citizens as a high-risk demographic, and therefore a high priority for service.
These enclosed areas with low speed limits are easier for driverless cabs to navigate than say Downtown San Francisco or New York City, also providing the perfect conditions for Voyage to run real world trials for the technology ahead of delivery-based projects in the future.
Those of you that know your crime dramas will probably be a little bemused by the notion of UV lighting protecting people, what with its radiation having potential to scramble human DNA in large doses, but Voyage has mounted sensors within the seats to ensure that no one is present in the vehicle when the lights go on. As a secondary measure, human technicians are on hand to hit the red button – watching through interior cameras.
Thus far, 15 vans have been modified, but CEO Oliver Cameron is planning to operate a network of ‘hundreds’ of vehicles in the near future. Buoyed by cost reductions to vital tech, including the cost of sensors (65%) and Voyage’s CPU of choice (25%), seniors at the start-up now see a clear path to profitability that wasn’t there pre-Covid in the Robotaxi industry.
Strangely, it seems Covid-19 has provided the perfect economic conditions to combat Covid-19 within transportation.
