ROBOTS ARE THE FUTURE OF PROFESSIONAL CLEANING, BUT IS THERE A PLACE FOR THEM IN THE PRESENT?
It's amazing, but the industry, whose representatives were called Mr. or Mrs. Mopp relatively recently, today has every right to call itself advanced. Judging by the number of cleaning robots appearing at all the most representative cleaning exhibitions, the fourth industrial revolution has indeed already taken place in this area!
Industry experts are adding fuel to the fire, promising that the cleaning "will not be the same anymore", and eminent video bloggers, enthusiastically presenting to the audience everything interesting that catches their eye, while not distinguishing prototypes from serial samples. At the same time, manufacturers who know firsthand all the strengths and weaknesses of robotic solutions are questioning the popular thesis that they will someday displace people from cleaning. Indeed, this will be possible only when robots "learn" to program, maintain and repair each other. Despite the rapid development of technology, this will happen very soon. In the meantime, robots are beginning to be used in difficult areas of harvesting operations associated with high risk.
One of the most obvious examples is the cleaning of swimming pools, the need for which led at one time to the emergence of companies producing robotic devices for this work. They successfully replace a person, and there is no need to drain water from the pools. Cleaning of air ducts of ventilation systems, solar panels and facades of buildings, sorting of garbage and even cleaning of beaches is robotized — the Italian company DronyX, engaged in robotization of various sectors of the economy, presented the Solarino Sand Beach solution — a reliable, quiet, convenient and environmentally safe robot.
It would seem that the most popular type of cleaning service — regular floor washing — is an ideal "field of activity" for robotic machines, and there is already plenty to choose from. However, despite the fact that after 2016, a turning point, according to experts, for the cleanliness industry, new names of robotic solutions appeared in the world, their implementation, contrary to expectations, still overcomes the inertia of the market.
THE MARKET OF ROBOTIC MACHINES FOR PROFESSIONAL CLEANING
According to the forecasts of Goldstein Research, the global market of autonomous robots for cleaning floors will increase at an average annual rate of 15.1% during the forecast period 2016-2024. In addition, it is expected that by the end of this period, the volume of this market will reach $ 4.2 billion. The results of another study “Industrial Cleaning Robot Market — Global Outlook and Forecast 2017 — 2022” by Arizton (USA), confirm that 2016 really was a turning point for the cleaning services sector. The growing demand for robotic devices for this activity has contributed to the rapid development of enterprises in the United States and Europe offering increasingly simple and user-friendly robotic solutions.
The largest consumer of professional robots for cleaning / cleaning is North America, followed by Europe, led in this matter by Germany and Italy, where the automation of enterprises is quite high, and the demand for robots, including for professional cleaning, is growing. This study provides a long list of the largest manufacturers of cleaning robots in various fields. However, most of them are focused on the production of robotic products for special purposes. The most numerous groups of robots produced are designed for inspection and cleaning of ventilation systems, sewerage, solar panels and facades, for underwater inspection and cleaning of ship hulls, tanks and pools, metal structures at various industrial enterprises.
Companies that produce robots for cleaning floors are noticeably smaller in this list. These include: ADLATUS Robotics, Alfred Kärcher SE & Co. KG, Avidbots, Cleanfix, Fybots, Makita, Muratec, Nilfisk and Diversey. This category should also include manufacturers such as HEFTER cleantech, Wetrok and TVX, whose robotic solutions were able to get acquainted with the visitors of INTERCLEAN Amsterdam 2018. The Japanese corporation Amano, which presented its robotic solution for testing at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, prepared on the eve of the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020, did not get into this list either.
In addition to the automated Amano floor washing machine, cleaning robots from other Japanese manufacturers participated in this event — F. Roboclean from Figla Technology, ROBO Cleaner from Nakanishi Metal Works (very similar to ROBO 40 Cleanfix), and a robot for washing the glazing of Windowmate from the company of the same name.
