Robot platform for cleaning. Valuation the concept.

Project DORBEETLE

It became necessary to construct a universal robotic platform for various unskilled jobs in the smart city.

Recent population surveys show, that most people would prefer to live in smart cities already now. But if talk about the smart city. What do you imagine? Is it a futuristic shape or is it some specific functions which make our lives better? Within 10 most sufficient Smart city criteria, 's always will be a CITY BEAUTIFICATION. Nice living environment. But could you imagine a nice, pleasant smelling place without cleaning?

Cleaning is a big part of the city budget. For example, in cities with a population of one million inhabitants, every year spends about 50 Million euros to clean the city. City cleaning work is low-skilled and high intensity. In Smart Cities cleaning work should be secure and automated. 

The main advantage of robots usage is cleaning cost saving. Not only because of efficiency, but it allows to reduce expenses on extra rates during night shifts.

Idea

So, last winter I head appears a thought about cleaning assistant. It was snow winter. Once in the evening friend of mine called to me and asked a favour to help clean parking area from snow because his sweeper was ill. And we did it in 3,5 hours together. After that we then we made the blade to clean the snow and install it to a car than were able to clear the tighter area in 40 minutes.

The thought about assistant getting stronger. In the company where I am currently working we developing automated test systems for electronics. We do software and hardware development. So, I involved in a team robotic and electronic engineers and we did a prototype. It has a camera, for capture video for remote control, safety system with infrared, ultrasonic sensors and manipulator hand control.

Next question was who will be a customer?

1. Municipal Companies for Waste Treatment

2. Immovable property Maintenance Companies (shops, car parks, entertainment centres)

3. Parks and beach Maintenance Companies

4. Factories, offices and agencies with Restricted area

5. Logistics warehouses

6. Breeding complexes

7. Private road owners, property owners associations

Because we need to know work specific in details. And we start to develop customers.

From customer feedbacks, we get know demands:

A. No upfront investment.

B. No term commitment

C. Future-proof against technology obsolescence

D. Return of upgrade equipment at any time

E. Subscription-based financing.

In other words, they asked not about cleaning robots, but about cleaning services. It wasn’t feet to our business model and we decided to change it. The aim was finding a niche not to compete with sweepers or maintenances companies, but the business idea is complementary services to cleaning companies, executed by robots with the aim to reduce expenses and increase the efficiency.

Here I will call to your imagination again, just imagine the night shift cleaning at the supermarket parking area. 20 sweepers were working at night to clean big parking area of IKEA. And after robot usage 15 of them are sleeping at home. 5 is still working the same, but additionally introduced 2 new staff members, who are taking care of robot work. 15= 2+robots.

We understand, that make that vision come true we should collaborate with:

1. cleaning experts to make solution adaptable for surfaces
2. security experts to regardless of circumstances opportunity to take control over
3. certification centres to minimize machinery directive risks  
4. cloud computing developers to have a single pane of management and certificates based connections
5. finance institutions to provide cleaning machines leasing opportunity

What is done in the world

And of course, to start a big deal you need to know, does somebody else do the same? We have traced competitors, they concentrated on the robotic remote control, 1/5 of them think about autonomous mode. In 2016 universal robots for all year around was not offered in a market. Here are some good examples of machines present on the market: 

• WINTER -for snow cleaning  - ATR ORBITER
• SPRING - for street cleaning - DUST CLEAN
• SUMMER- for a lawn mower - SPIDER
• AUTUMN- for leaf collection - LEAFEATER

What we have now?

Click on the picture below to see quick VIDEO (2:45) about the concept 

What are we looking for now?    

We are looking for the early adapter to get know requirements. We'd like to start a pilot project in West and North Europe. Of course, we need support from accelerators, because we plan to grow. After the first positive references, we will be interested in a smart investment.