Vitality Opens Its Doors to UV-C Disinfection Robots

Gyms are one of the growing number of businesses that continue to be affected by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, after a brief period of reopening last summer. Interestingly, a survey by Sport England has found that Brits miss being able to workout at their gyms more than doing any other sporting activity, and 87% plan to resume their memberships post-lockdown.

While home workouts have served some individuals in lockdown, doing a burpee next to the sofa hasn’t satisfied some other people’s itch to return to the treadmill. However, some gym members remain nervous about returning to training in a gym as they want to know that these leisure facilities are taking adequate measures to safeguard their health.

As soon as a re-opening date has been confirmed, guidance will be issued for the reopening of sports facilities including rules on cleaning regimes, social distancing and how to ensure staff and clients can work out safely in their gym.

UV-C Robots In Vitality

Ahead of any announcement regarding when they can welcome members back to the facility, one gym group who has taken their commitment to cleanliness to the next level is Vitality Health & Fitness which has two gyms, one in Neath and the other in Port Talbot.

When the gyms re-opened in Summer 2020, the team followed all Public Health Wales guidelines as well as taking all members’ and visitors’ temperatures on arrival and providing towels for individuals to clean down equipment after their training sessions.

But the team at Vitality were on the look-out for something that would re-instil confidence in their members once they could open their doors once again. So, they invited the team from Evolve Raybotix in Swansea to give a demonstration and trial sanitisation of their state-of-the-art disinfection robots at their Neath gym. The UV-C light used in the robot technology, in combination with Ozone gas, can destroy 99.9% of dangerous bacteria, microorganisms, germs and pathogens in all environments across all surfaces.

Pre-Programmed Disinfection

Importantly, the Raybotix robots can be programmed to schedule a disinfection of a room or dedicated area either remotely or manually to allow for a cleaning process to suit operational needs, either during working or non-work hours. Through the use of Lidar sensors, these robots will map a surrounding area before the disinfection cycle begins which allows for the pinpointing of optimum positioning of the machine.

Says Dan Morgan, Manager at Vitality Health & Fitness, “Gyms have been hit really hard due to Covid-19 and we’ve been shut down for around nine months out of the last 12. We did have a little bit of resistance at first, as people don’t like change. So, we tried a few different methods like blue roll and towels. I came across Evolve Raybotix via Facebook. I’m sure that most people are aware that gyms are a touch sensitive area in general, as every client that comes in here will each touch 8 to 10 pieces of kit on average. By bringing the Raybotix in and using them frequently, we have that added bonus as it’s proven to destroy bacteria.” Listen to more of

Dan’s comments here:

Results Driven Technology

Both our NEO and EOS models were tested at Vitality and as mentioned by Dan, the results were very impressive in this particular environment where there are multiple surfaces due to the extensive gym equipment in place.

You can read more about how our Evolve Raybotix UV-C Disinfection robots can help gyms and leisure centres to re-open for as little as just £33 a week, here.