Cleaning robots: helping F&S work smarter

The cleanliness of the St. George campus has always been top priority—but frequent disinfection of high-touch areas is now more critical than ever.

Previously, surfaces such as door handles, railings, elevator buttons, and door opening buttons were cleaned daily or weekly. As part of the University’s COVID-19 safety measures, high-touch surfaces are disinfected twice a day. Reprioritizing tasks has left less time for floor and carpet cleaning that is traditionally very labour-intensive.

The ECOBOT Scrubber 50.
The ECOBOT Scrubber 50 is a fully autonomous cleaning robot. F&S recently introduced six of these robots to support the Caretaking Services team.

This is where the robot comes in. For process efficiency, F&S invested in fully autonomous, compact, and sustainable robots that can clean floor surfaces. These new machines are easily managed on the cloud.

“The ECOBOT Scrub 50s work with minimal human interaction according to mapped areas to clean,” said Ron Atkins, manager of Caretaking Services. “A caretaker simply has to move it to its designated starting point and push the start button.”

When the robot is done cleaning its mapped area, it is moved to the next floor. This vastly reduces the time commitment for the cumbersome task of cleaning floors or carpets of campus buildings.

“The robots have helped us quite a bit,” said Caretaking Services team member Connie Peixoto. “They enable us to free up time each day, which can then be spent on other cleaning tasks like sanitization.”

Since first deploying the ECOBOT Scrub 50s in March 2020, the robots have cleaned a total of more than 2.7 million square feet and have allowed more than 500 hours of labour to be redirected to focus on other types of cleaning.

“The robots allow for the teams within our buildings to focus on detailed work,” said Atkins. “We’re currently testing one of our ECOBOT Scrub 50s in the Warrens Stevens Building Field House as the flooring there has always been challenging to clean. We hope to get better results with a fraction of the labour.”

The Caretaking Services team uses a cloud platform to monitor the robots in real-time. They can review data about a robot’s cleaning performance, such as the total area cleaned and water consumption. Using this information, the Caretaking Services team can optimize floor care operations over time while supporting their sustainable cleaning goals. The robots contribute sustainability goals by saving water—the units filter and recirculate water used for washing.

Currently, the Scrub 50s are active in Sidney Smith Hall, Galbraith Building, Sandford Fleming Building, Wallberg Building, D.L. Pratt Building, Medical Sciences Building, Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research, Lash Miller Chemical Laboratories, and the Earth Sciences Centre.

Above all, the Caretaking Services team has been working tirelessly alongside the robots to keep campus workspaces clean for everyone to use and ensure a safe campus environment for people to visit, learn, and enjoy.

July 19, 2021
Adelaide Chan