Tennant, a company that designs and manufacturers cleaning systems, announced today the debut of its new T380AMR Robotic Floor Scrubber, which is powered by Brain Corp.’s Brain OS. The new robot is smaller than other versions of Tennant’s floor scrubbers, allowing the robot to navigate smaller spaces.
The Brain OS is used by a number of different robot manufacturers for a variety purposes including scrubbing and vacuuming floors. Brain-powered robots can autonomously traverse store aisles cleaning, all while avoiding people and other obstacles.
The COVID crisis is placing a spotlight on store sanitation. According to Brain Robots can provide a more thorough cleaning that is also verfiable (you can check the software to see where the robot has been). Additionally, shifting the dull, repetitive work of floor scrubbing over to a robot frees up humans to do other higher-skilled tasks like customer service.
Floor-scrubbing robots are part of a larger move grocery retail is making towards automation. In addition to floor scrubbers, we’re also seeing robots from Bossa Nova and Simbe Robotics autonomously scan shelves to check inventory, and companies like Takeoff and Fabric build out robot-powered automated fulfillment.
Brain-powered floor scrubbing robots are already being used by Walmart, as well as other retailers like Schnuck Markets, Kroger and Giant Eagle.
The news from Tennant today is interesting because a more diminutive robot is built to work in smaller stores with tighter spaces. While no pricing information was made available, presumably this smaller version — meant for smaller stores — would be more affordable and open up autonomy to more stores.
In other words, be ready to see more robots when you go grocery shopping.
