Learn / Where robots are going · 2 min read
Will robots replace cleaners?
An honest look at where robots are today
Nobody can tell you when, or how far, robots will go in cleaning. Today they still struggle with hands-on work that changes from room to room, like a restroom, and that gap is why teams want video of your crew's work. Owners who help train them get to see the changes up close.
What robots do today
You may have seen a robot floor scrubber working an open aisle. It follows a set path over open floor, which is the easier part of the job.
The hard part is what your crew does with their hands, like scrubbing around a toilet base, pulling a liner that's stuck or wiping a desk without moving someone's papers. Robots are still slow and clumsy at that kind of work.
Why that gap exists
Hand skills need a lot of examples, and there aren't many. The Apple team behind EgoDex wrote that there is no internet-sized collection of video for this kind of hand work.
That shortage is why companies now pay people to record, and Figure's Index app pays people by the minute to film their tasks. When the work is easy to fake or already solved, nobody pays for video of it.
What we will and won't tell you
We won't promise robots will stay out of cleaning, and we won't give you a date for when they'll show up, because anyone who gives you a date is guessing.
What we can say is that owners who take part see how this work is changing from the inside, so you'll know what the teams ask for, what gets accepted and how the tools move, a lot sooner than someone reading about it later.
Your crew's skill is what these teams are trying to learn, and we pay you for each hour of it our team accepts. That money comes in now, on work your crew is already doing, while you watch this field up close.
What other owners ask
Am I training my own replacement?
It's a fair question, and nobody knows how fast robots will improve at hands-on cleaning, so we won't guess a date. We can tell you that owners in this program see the changes early and get paid for the hours in the meantime.
Will my building clients hear that I'm helping train robots?
Only people who agreed to be recorded should be in a recording, so talk with us about what to tell a building before your crew records there.
Where to read more
- EgoDex: Learning Dexterous Manipulation from Large-Scale Egocentric Video (arXiv)
- Figure: Index app page
These are public examples from other companies. They are not Colby partners or customers.