Robots that work while guests sleep

A hotel is a building with long corridors, lifts and night hours in which the work can be done without guests present. The delivery robot takes the item at reception, calls the lift itself and stops at the room door. Payload is usually ten to forty kilograms per trip, which covers towels, water, amenities and small kitchen orders.

What to check before buying

The lift needs a call interface, otherwise the robot waits for staff on every floor. Wifi has to cover the corridors and the lift car without gaps, because the robot stops and reports an error when the connection drops. Floors are a mixture: carpet in corridors, tiles in bathrooms, stone in the lobby. The cleaning machine is chosen for that mixture.

The night schedule

Scrubbing machines run three to six hours per charge and in practice cover around seven hundred to fourteen hundred square metres an hour. The dock, the water point and the drain should sit close to the area being cleaned. Every trip to a distant store room eats into time that was planned for cleaning.

Staff need a short training session: starting a cleaning plan, emptying the dirty water tank, changing the brush and what to do when the machine reports an error. For delivery it is enough that reception can enter a room number and close the lid. The lawn goes to the mower, which works to a schedule and returns to its dock on its own.