November 19, 2004—The United Nations’ annual World Robotics Survey forecasts a surge in robot use by 2007, and Intellibot, producing autonomous floor scrubbers, reports that West Point Military Academy and Stanford Hospital are two of dozens of organizations taking advantage of Intellibot’s robotic technology to maintain a high standard of cleanliness while reducing their reliance on human labor for the tedious task of floor cleaning.
The U.N. survey cited increasing labor costs as a driving force in the international shift to robotics. In the case of commercial floor cleaning, labor accounts for 80 to 90 percent of the cost. Intellibot’s autonomous floor scrubbers reduce labor costs by up to 85 percent, without compromising quality, according to the company.
Intellibot’s IS 750 floor scrubber cleans up to 10,000 sq.ft. per hour, runs up to four hours on a single battery, and operates for an eight-hour shift with only about 30 minutes of human intervention. Like the Mars rovers, the IS 750 uses highly refined software running on on-board computers to map the areas to be cleaned and create a program with the optimum cleaning pattern, explains Intellibot. Advanced sonar sensors detect moving and stationary objects in the scrubber’s path, navigate around obstacles, and avoid pitfalls like stairways. If the unit encounters a problem it can’t solve, it pages the human operator.
West Point uses a dozen Intellibot floor scrubbers three to five hours a day, five days a week to clean barracks and classroom spacewith a 95% average uptime. Stanford, an early adopter of the autonomous floor scrubber, has used the technology for a decade to clean 40,000 square feet of hospital corridors each shift.
For more information, contact Intellibot.
