ABB Robots and Restroom Cleaning: Mops to Robot Arms

Hivebotics raised $6M for Abluo, a robot arm that cleans whole restrooms. Here is how ABB robots already make toilet seats and where bathroom robots go next.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/25/20261 min read

In April 1959, a photographer at a forging tools factory in Zreče, Slovenia, recorded its new washroom: tall lockers, a long row of basins and a worker crouched down by the sinks. Shared restrooms have always been cleaned that way, by hand, with brushes, mops and chemicals.

Black and white photo of a long washroom with metal lockers and a row of basins, a worker crouching by the sinks
Black and white photo of a long washroom with metal lockers and a row of basins, a worker crouching by the sinks

The new washroom at a forging tools factory in Zreče, Slovenia, April 1959. Photo: unknown photographer / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Machines have taken on small parts of the job. Paris put self-cleaning Sanisette toilets on its streets, which wash themselves after each visit. In most offices, airports and parks, though, crews still spray and wipe every sink and bowl by hand, like this maintenance team in Yellowstone.

Round grey self-cleaning public toilet cabin on a Paris pavement
Round grey self-cleaning public toilet cabin on a Paris pavement

A self-cleaning Sanisette public toilet on a Paris street. Photo: Anthony Atkielski / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Hivebotics, a Singapore company spun out of NUS, raised a $6 million Series A on September 4 for Abluo, a mobile robot with an arm that cleans whole restrooms, including toilets, urinals, sinks and floors. It finds each fixture with cameras, cleans with steam, chemical jets and vacuum, and has logged about 10,000 hours at 20 sites.

Two workers in yellow safety shirts and blue gloves spraying and wiping restroom sinks
Two workers in yellow safety shirts and blue gloves spraying and wiping restroom sinks

Maintenance workers cleaning restroom sinks by hand in Yellowstone National Park. Photo: Yellowstone NPS / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB robots have been in the bathroom business at the factory end for decades. Austrian toilet seat maker MKW started using industrial robots in 1987, when seats were still ground and finished by hand. By 2007 its ABB IRB 2400 and IRB 4400 robots had helped it raise seat production five-fold, according to an ABB case study.

Orange ABB robot arm with a gripper holding a white toilet seat in a production cell
Orange ABB robot arm with a gripper holding a white toilet seat in a production cell

An ABB robot handling toilet seats at MKW in Austria. Photo: ABB

The same case study says the robots could switch to a new seat model in 15 minutes, useful when a factory makes 50 designs in 30 colors. A restroom robot has the opposite problem, because every building's fixtures are a bit different. ABB's GoFa cobot, which senses contact through its joints, is the kind of arm that could work in a room people are still using.

Two people at a desk watching an ABB robot inside a lit glass cell
Two people at a desk watching an ABB robot inside a lit glass cell

Engineers with an ABB robot cell run by the OmniCore controller. Photo: ABB

I expect self-cleaning restrooms in airports and hospitals first, with robots working night shifts alongside cleaners. A home version is further off, but a small arm that scrubs the toilet on a schedule would probably sell faster than any humanoid.

Grey and white ABB GoFa cobot arm working at a lab bench under an ABB Robotics for healthcare sign
Grey and white ABB GoFa cobot arm working at a lab bench under an ABB Robotics for healthcare sign

A GoFa cobot at ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

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