| Job on the shop floor | Scrubs floors on a route; spots spills and debris |
|---|---|
| Where it works | Open floor areas, aisles, often before or after opening |
| Moves product? | No |
| Works around shoppers? | Yes, though many stores run them when it is quiet |
| Where it stands today | Commercial; among the most widely used robots in stores |
| Main limit | Still needs people to fill, empty, maintain it and clean what it can't reach |
What it does
- An autonomous floor scrubber follows a mapped route and cleans the floor without a driver.[7]
- Hazard-spotting robots look for spills, shrink wrap, dropped produce and coffee beans, alert staff and keep a record with images of each spill and clean-up.[6]
Strengths
Limits
- Someone still fills and empties tanks, charges it, and cleans edges, corners and under fixtures the route can't reach.
- A hazard-spotting robot reports a spill; a person still has to clear it.[6]
- Floor cleaning does nothing for the shelf: it is an operations saving, not an availability one.
Where it stands today
- Brain Corp's BrainOS powers autonomous commercial floor cleaners; Badger sells spill detection as part of its in-store robot.[7][6]
Examples
Ask before you buy
- How many minutes a day of staff time does it need for filling, emptying and charging?
- What share of my floor does its route actually cover?
- How does it stop and give way around shoppers, carts and children?
Other types
- Humanoid restocking, stock rotation and order picking
- Shelf-scanning robots
- Delivery and pickup robots
- In-store picking robots
- Fixed micro-fulfilment systems
Sources
Every numbered claim on this page links here. Open the source to check it.
- Hazard mitigation (Badger Technologies)Robot identifies spills, shrink wrap, produce and coffee beans on the floor and archives records and images of each spill and clean-up.
- Robots, AI and autonomous technology for smarter operations (Brain Corp)BrainOS autonomy for commercial floor cleaning and shelf scanning; announces an autonomous mobile manipulator for stocking and picking.