Singaporean machine manufacturing company Cenozoic Robotics has launched a new cleaning robot, named the Spot Cleaner 50 (SP 50), which is designed to check its own work.
The company has described this as an anonymous cleaning machine and claims it can save labour time spent on floor cleaning, while also improving the cleaning consistency and results.
Labour shortages in the cleaning industry have stimulated increasing demand for cleaning robots, especially autonomous floor cleaning robots, Cenozoic Robotics has said.
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One of the main cleaning applications which the company says cannot be completed by a robot is ‘patrol cleaning’, as sensors work by acting passively to avoid obstacles, instead of actively detecting and cleaning spills and/or debris on the floor.
What’s more, robots are not suited to operating in environments with many people, meaning most of them are set to work in the early morning or late night, when areas are more likely to be vacant.
Lastly, as current robots often work along pre-programmed routes in a single pass, they cannot check if the floor has actually been cleaned. Cenozoic Robotics has said that this means a morning inspection will often find uncleaned areas that require a human follow-up.
As a response to these challenges, Cenozoic Robotics developed the SP 50. The machine uses the company’s proprietary artificial intelligence (AI)-powered algorithms, which reportedly enable it to detect stains and debris. It is designed to then automatically adjust the cleaning mode and run the spot-cleaning in the same manner as a human professional would.
Leveraging software company Nvidia’s Xavier AI edge computing chips and multi-channel 3D lidar, the SP 50 can pass through high-traffic areas while assuring a clean floor every time, according to its developer.
Finally, the company has added that the bot can also perform a cleaning result checkup, meaning it will repeatedly clean the same area to ensure the job is properly done every time.
