"Please leave the room and keep the door closed. Disinfection will begin shortly." The words, in English, come from a robot.

"It can speak Chinese too," said Simon Ellis, vice-president of the company UVD Robots.

Through a window pane, the robot could be seen moving about the room, flashing ultraviolet light like a camera flash and destroying every kind of bacteria and virus in the room.

"Our business was already brisk. But since the coronavirus pandemic it has gone sky-high," said Per Juul Nielsen, the company's chief executive.

The company has already sent large numbers of the robots to China, particularly to Wuhan. Its sales in Asia and Europe have also multiplied.

"The biggest orders have come from Italy," Mr Nielsen said. "Their situation is truly dire. We are trying to help them as much as we can."

Naturally, UVD Robots has tripled its production.

At the company's factory in Odense, Denmark's third-largest city, one of these disinfection robots is now being built every day.

Each robot carries eight bulbs that give off intense ultraviolet, or UV-C, light.

Source: BBC Bangla. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.