Robotic Floor Care: Cleaning Up after Covid

In a pandemic, cleaning becomes more complex and cannot be put off till outside normal working hours. Robotic Floor Care: Intelligent machines are helping to free up human hands for other tasks and ensure safer environments.

As Europe begins to open up again, business owners and managers are adapting to a world that must effectively live alongside the stresses of Covid-19 – and new questions are being asked. How can we ensure that our employees and customers feel safe? How can we comply with standards and requirements that appear to change from week to week?

It’s within this environment that cleaning has emerged as a core component of restoring confidence in everyday living. It’s at the heart of rebuilding trust, and businesses must ensure a more detailed and more consistent clean to showcase their commitment to a successful reopening. With workers being asked to do more and customers worried about indoor infection, automation provides a compelling solution.

Enter commercial robotic floor care, where industrial-grade cleaning machines perform tasks in public spaces without a human operator. While automation in robotic cleaning has been gaining traction for the past five years, the pandemic has put it front and center. Companies like Ahold Delhaize and Walmart have noted their commitment to cleaning with the help of robotics, and environments beyond retail, such as airports, schools, and hospitals, are following suit.

Brain Corp, an AI company that currently powers over 14,000 cleaning robots, has seen a surge of interest over the past 12 months. Its BrainOS-powered machines saw usage increase by 24 percent in April 2020, compared to the same month the previous year, and a 15 percent increase in the year overall. What’s more, a significant percentage of this uptick occurred during daytime hours, showing that businesses are cleaning more frequently and operating the technology during peak times.

Robotic floor care provides businesses with a number of key benefits, all of which are even more important with the realities of a pandemic:

• “Clean” has become a new brand value. Companies can effectively show their commitment to a more frequent, consistent cleaning program with robotics.
• The machines are an effective tool in helping cleaning staff get the job done. With increased levels of expectation around surface cleaning and sanitization, cleaning robots can complete dull, repetitive tasks in parallel.
• Advanced solutions can operate safely around people and adapt to changing environments, ensuring a cleaning program that’s being deployed around the clock.
• Robots provide businesses with automated performance reports so managers can constantly monitor, prove, and optimize their fleet.

Cleaner Is Cooler: While automation in robotic cleaning has been gaining traction for years, the pandemic has put it front and center. Companies have committed to cleaning with the help of robotics, and environments beyond retail, such as airports, schools, and hospitals, are following suit.

The deployment of these technologies is expected to continue an upward trajectory through Covid-19 and beyond. While recent events have certainly accelerated adoption, we’re likely to see robotic floor care take its place beside other typical, automated solutions over the next few years. Like manufacturing arms and washing machines, cleaning robots will be viewed as effective tools that help make our lives easier, safer, and more productive.

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