Customers walk down an aisle in a grocery store and glass and liquid are on the ground. It’s a health and safety risk that needs to be addressed immediately, so they look around for a worker to notify them of the mess. Instead of a staff member, customers then see a robot that comes down the aisle and cleans the mess.
How efficient! What the customer probably does not realize is that the robot is part of a growing number of IoT use cases that are making workplaces more efficient and safer. In this case, the grocery store is using ICE Cobotics’ all-inclusive subscription service for floor cleaning machines, parts and maintenance and performance and monitoring software.
While the ICE Cobotics’ service saved customers money, fleet management upkeep prompted the company to choose T IoT from T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom as its exclusive IoT connectivity solution worldwide. The ICE Cobotics solution is about more than just cleaning up spills – the robot fleets provide a fleet of full-blown floor cleaning service to keep stores cleaner and safer.
T IoT delivers cellular connectivity to more than 7,500 new and existing ICE Cobotics intelligent and autonomous cleaning units worldwide. This includes the Cobi 18, a compact autonomous floor scrubber designed to clean 5,000 to 7,000 square feet per hour at less than $20 a day.
T IoT supports ICE Cobotics’ subscription model by delivering cleaning performance data and insights to customers in the retail, grocery, convenience, healthcare, higher education and hospitality industries.
For example, a hospital with at least five branches around the city has around 30-40 robots in service. The cellular connectivity will allow the hospital’s maintenance and facilities team to view their Clean Score — goal-based cleaning performance data generated by ICE Cobotics’ i-SYNERGY fleet management software.
Traditionally, a visit to each location would have to be made to inspect if cleaning happened. This costs money. Now, cleaning efficiency is confirmed from each location using the fleet management software.
“This is what T IoT was designed for — helping enterprises solve global IoT challenges and deliver innovative solutions that make their customers want more,” said Callie Field, President, T-Mobile Business Group.
T IoT will also help ICE Cobotics eliminate downtime by delivering over the air software and firmware updates to its customers, as well as mechanical telemetry data, from sensors and cameras in each machine, back to the company.
What this does is gives customers the ability to monitor and analyze critical information like hours of use, routes, temperature and battery life to help determine if certain components of a machine are operating within tolerance, if service is required and if a part is near its end of life.
“T IoT is critical to the success of our cleaning machines,” said Mike DeBoer, president, ICE Cobotics U.S. “The data we receive from our autonomous scrubbers allows us to deliver cleaning performance insights and an enhanced clean to our customers at an affordable price.”
Edited by
Erik Linask
