Learn / Where robots are going · 2 min read
Will robots replace cleaners?
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. That gap is why teams want video of your crew's work, and owners who help train them get a close look as things change.
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. Figure's Index app, for one, pays people by the minute to film their tasks. Nobody pays for video of work that is easy to fake or already solved.
What we will and won't tell you
We won't promise that robots will stay out of cleaning. We also 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 watch this work change from the inside. You'll see what the teams ask for, what gets accepted and how the tools improve, long before you would read about it.
These teams are trying to learn what your crew already knows how to do. We pay you for each hour of it our team accepts, and that pay comes now, for shifts your crew was going to work anyway.
What other owners ask
Am I training my own replacement?
Fair question. Nobody knows how fast robots will get better at hands-on cleaning, so we won't guess a date. What we can tell you is 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?
They should. You need the building's OK before your crew records there, and our building letter tells them the video helps AI and robot teams learn how cleaning is done. Only people who agreed to be recorded should be in a recording. Talk with us if you're not sure what to tell a building.
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.