Dirty Work for Robots – Oven-Sized Roombas

#News(Startup) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Autonomous vehicles and robotic food-service startups have captured the public’s imagination, but cleaning robots have enormous, if unsexy, potential. The market for commercial-cleaning equipment is giant and fragmented, accounting for an estimated $5 billion in global sales annually. Sheikh and his cofounder Pablo Molina, also 31, believe that as much as a third of all commercial-cleaning equipment could be autonomous by 2023, giving them an opportunity to build a very large business.

Inside an enclosure made of thousands of giant white, blue and yellow Lego bricks at the company’s factory in Kitchener, Ontario, the robot goes through a quality assurance test, turning corners and scrubbing the floor as it goes. Lights along the bottom of the machine glow blue as it moves autonomously, then turn fuchsia as it stops to remap its route, aided by artificial intelligence. Once the machine is fully vetted in the Lego test zone, it will be loaded into a wooden crate and lined up with a handful of others that are waiting to be shipped to customers. Walking the floor, Sheikh, wearing a gray puffy jacket over a blue Avidbots T-shirt, can barely contain his excitement. “Avidbots,” he says, “is like a fantasy space for engineers.”

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