3.5 Hours to 40 Minutes: The Cleaning Robot Turning Heads on São Paulo’s Metro

Gausium Omnie (Scrubber 50) at Line 5-Lilás, operated by Motiva — and caught on camera by Brazil’s biggest TV network

Overview

• Customer: Motiva, one of Brazil’s largest mobility infrastructure operators
• Industry: Public Transport
• Location: Line 5-Lilás, São Paulo Metro — Capão Redondo, Campo Limpo and Santa Cruz stations
• Scenario: Metro platforms and mezzanines
• Deployment: Gausium Omnie (Scrubber 50) × 2 — one unit covering Capão Redondo and Campo Limpo, one stationed at Santa Cruz
• Deployed by: Alabia, Gausium’s distributor in Brazil
• Key results: Platform cleaning time down from 3.5 hours to ~40 minutes; water use down from ~980 L to 15 L per operation (–98%)

Santa Cruz, São Paulo Metro (cr: Motiva)

“When I got off the train, everyone had stopped”

In July 2026, a live report on SPTV — the São Paulo news programme of Rede Globo, Brazil’s largest television network — captured an unusual scene on a metro platform.

The reporter pointed down the platform:

“There’s something — a piece of equipment — right there in the middle of the platform, moving back and forth… look, it’s coming towards you… very quiet, very steady.”

For daily commuters, a metro platform is not somewhere you expect to see anything new. A sizeable machine navigating it on its own was something else. One passenger told the crew:

“When I got off the train, everyone had stopped. I thought, what’s going on? I looked over and — I was surprised. I didn’t expect to see something like this.”

Another was already thinking about home:

“I saw that big thing and guessed it was a vacuum cleaner. My first thought was, I need one of these at home. Mine is tiny — I have to stop and empty it all the time. This one could handle it.”

What passengers quickly worked out is that the machine wasn’t there for show. It was working. The “big thing” that stopped São Paulo commuters in their tracks is the Gausium Omnie (Scrubber 50), an autonomous commercial floor scrubber — and it has a job on Line 5-Lilás.

Gausium Omnie (Scrubber 50) at Santa Cruz, Linha 5-Lilás (cr: Motiva)

The Deployment

Line 5-Lilás runs 17 stations from Capão Redondo to Chácara Klabin, a key artery in São Paulo’s commuter network. It is operated by Motiva (formerly CCR), one of Brazil’s largest mobility infrastructure groups, through its rail arm Trilhos da Motiva.

The deployment is implemented by Alabia, Gausium’s local distributor in Brazil, which handles on-site rollout, operator training and ongoing support. As of July 2026, two Omnie units are in service across three stations: one unit rotates between Capão Redondo and Campo Limpo, while the other is stationed at Santa Cruz. Equipped with smart sensors and autonomous navigation, the robots pre-map their work areas and adjust routes on the fly — rerouting around obstacles, or pausing when needed.

That behaviour is exactly what the SPTV crew observed on camera: the robot pauses when passenger flow builds up and resumes once the platform clears. At this stage, the units run mainly during off-peak hours, with trained teams monitoring operations in real time.

The Results: 3.5 Hours to 40 Minutes, 980 Litres to 15

Brazilian rail industry publication Revista Ferroviária reported the operational figures from Motiva’s deployment on July 24:

• Average platform cleaning time: down from 3 hours 30 minutes to around 40 minutes
• Water use per operation: down from roughly 980 litres to 15 litres — a reduction of about 98%

The report also noted a shift that is easy to overlook: with the robots covering routine floor scrubbing, cleaning teams can redirect their time to work that genuinely needs human judgement — technical cleaning, hard-to-reach areas, and supervising overall quality.

“The arrival of these robots reinforces our commitment to continuously improving the customer experience through technology — making our stations cleaner, more efficient and more sustainable.”

— Fábio Silva, Executive Manager of Customer Service, Line 5-Lilás, Motiva

Gausium Omnie docking with the workstation (cr: Motiva)

Building on the success of the pilot, Motiva plans to gradually scale the programme and explore deployments at more Line 5-Lilás stations.

Robotic cleaning in public transit never happens overnight. Machines have to adapt to different station layouts, floor materials, passenger flows and working windows, and operations teams build up their own experience site by site. But the change is already visible: a job that used to take three and a half hours now takes about 40 minutes — and the hours saved go to the places robots can’t yet reach: equipment gaps, restrooms, and the stains that still call for a human eye.

Not Many Robots Can Work a Metro Station

Urban rail is one of the hardest environments in robotic cleaning. Platform cleaning happens in short windows outside peak hours, and the robot isn’t facing an empty floor — it’s navigating a live, complex public space: platforms, mezzanines, columns, passageways, and passengers who can appear at any moment. The floors themselves are unforgiving: platform tiles, anti-slip strips, tactile paving, screen-door tracks, each demanding different handling.

Which is why admission to projects like this is rarely about cleaning performance alone. A robot has to stop and steer reliably around people in motion; its power, charging and parking arrangements have to meet station fire-safety and equipment rules; and every run — duration, coverage, water use — has to leave a traceable record the operator can audit. None of that appears on a spec sheet. It has to be proven in real stations.

Gausium has cleared that bar many times over. Beyond Motiva in Brazil, Gausium robots are in service with rail operators worldwide, including Network Rail in the UK (13 units), SMRT in Singapore (89 units), Metro de Madrid in Spain, the Kyushu Shinkansen in Japan, and Guangzhou Metro and Shenzhen MTR in China.

News cycles pass; operating procedures stay. The real measure of a cleaning robot’s maturity is being written into a city’s daily timetable. In São Paulo, it is still a novelty. In London and Singapore, it stopped being one a long time ago.

About Motiva

Motiva (formerly CCR) is one of Brazil’s largest mobility infrastructure operators. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in São Paulo, the group adopted the Motiva name in April 2025, bringing its businesses under a single brand. It spans highways, urban rail and airports: more than 3,900 km of toll roads across 13 Brazilian states, urban mobility services carrying around 3 million passengers a day, and 20 airports handling over 40 million passengers a year. Through its rail arm, Trilhos da Motiva, the group operates and maintains São Paulo’s Line 5-Lilás metro and Line 17-Ouro monorail.

About Alabia

Alabia is a Brazilian robotics and AI company with more than eight years of experience deploying autonomous robots across Brazil and Latin America. Headquartered in Brazil, Alabia operates as a distributor, integrator and operator: rather than simply supplying equipment, it designs complete robotic operations — combining autonomous robots with specialised human teams — and supports them in sectors where operations cannot fail, including public transit, hospitals, logistics and commercial facilities. As Gausium’s distributor in Brazil, Alabia leads local deployment, training and day-to-day operational support for projects such as Line 5-Lilás.

About Gausium

Gausium is a leading company of AI-powered autonomous cleaning solutions with more than 9,400 customers in more than 70 countries and regions. Products and services of Gausium include commercial floor cleaning robots, docking stations, cloud platform and application software, and more in the pipeline. Driven by a vision to lead the intelligent digital transformation of the cleaning and service industry, Gausium offers the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of commercial cleaning robots, empowering individuals to work smarter and lead more fulfilling lives.