Robots taught to clean toilets

In 2020, Somatic announced the creation of a smart robot toilet cleaner. on August 17, 2023, the company announced the commercial launch of a robot service. According to the developers, the autonomous robot saves time and money for office and building owners. The robot opens and closes doors, rides the elevator between floors, sprays disinfectant and water on the walls and floor, lifts lids to clean them, and then vacuums the room.

Back in 2020, Somatic said that to use the robot, owners are sent a set of sensors for the robot to operate at the facility. Also, the company’s specialists or the owners themselves walk around the building to make a floor plan, including all elevators and bathrooms, to make a map of the building using video and 3D data.

Next, the operator uses a virtual headset to create a model of the robot’s behavior, cleaning the toilets in the virtual world. The operator sees what the robot is supposed to see. Some of this virtual cleaning can be done once and then copied, as office toilets and bathrooms are of the same type.

According to the developers, these autonomous robots are not intended to completely replace cleaning staff, the robot is designed for everyday cleaning. If the automatic cleaner finds something unexpected, it will send photos by email to a human cleaner and move on to the next target.