A helping hand with cleaning

With the current staffing crisis, all options – including robots – should be considered, writes John Taylor.

It’s the perfect scenario. A pandemic that has forced an additional emphasis on cleaning but which has also impacted on cleaning staff availability. A nightmare for management trying to juggle limited staff resources with an even greater requirement that the property must be thoroughly cleaned.

If there is a positive aspect to the pandemic, it is that it’s essential for the wellbeing of residents, staff and visitors that all areas of a facility are kept clean. Cleaning has always been a “hands on” task but the times, they are a changing as artificial intelligence – AI – including robots become a vital helping hand.

Sure, there are many aspects of cleaning that aren’t suitable for robotic cleaning – and let’s not forget the importance of human interaction with residents – but with such a staffing crisis, all alternatives need to be considered.

A Wikipedia explanation of the term robots is that “robots are task-performing machines… capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically”. Many cleaning tasks are not that complex but are repetitive, so ideal for a robot to work. If we look at the layout of many aged care facilities, there are common areas such as corridors, lounge rooms, dining rooms and activities areas that are used during the daytime but vacant for the evening after residents go to their rooms, visitors leave and staffing numbers reduce.

This is the ideal time for the cleaning of these areas to be carried out. But these common areas tend to be bundled with resident room cleans that are carried out during the day. Spot cleaning walls, wiping handrails, dusting and so on is fine but using machines to clean floors has many restrictions. Why not use available staff to clean residents’ rooms and bathrooms and use autonomous machines to clean these common areas after hours?

There is increasing documentation that cleaning floors is more than an aesthetic function. Germs or bugs have been found to live on both hard floors, for example vinyl, ceramics and stone, and soft floors, such as carpeted areas, and can be aerated by people simply walking on the floors and the bugs landing on a vulnerable recipient.

“Robots don’t get sick and are not required to isolate.”

Automatic floor scrubbers, where a human guided multitask machine can sweep, wash and vacuum dry a hard floor in one pass, have been available for decades. The safety aspect is enormous. Dirty floors in front of the machine and clean, dry floors after the machine has passed. No wet slippery floors and minimal physically taxing mopping required. There is an increasing selection of compact machines for almost any hard floor area.

Robotic autonomous floor scrubbers are available from the major cleaning machine manufacturers but to date have been bigger machines for larger open areas. More compact machines are starting to appear on the market but the price difference between a conventional automatic floor scrubber and an autonomous robotic floor scrubber has been substantial. Robotic vacuum cleaners have become increasingly available. They range from the simple carpet sweeper style battery machine, which fairly ineffectively bounces around the floor, to the more sophisticated machines that map the floor to make sure that every area is covered and can have security devices such as cameras mounted on them.

The more sophisticated robots are very quiet so ideal to wander the corridors of an aged care facility when there are very few people about. The more complex machines have back-to base facilities to automatically recharge and have downloadable coverage maps and incident reports.

The prices vary greatly with new releases becoming increasingly more affordable – a similar price to a corded or battery-powered area vacuums but without the need for an operator.

Equipment vs staff

In many facilities the capital cost of equipment is not an issue. Even in an environment where there is adequate employment, an issue in the eyes of some management is the cost of the staff to use the equipment.

It is an interesting observation that as the pandemic lingered, autonomous and semi-autonomous pieces of equipment showed massive growth. A lack of trained staff and absenteeism were important issues. Robots don’t get sick and are not required to isolate.

There are manufacturers and suppliers that lease the machines with inbuilt servicing agreements. So, let’s get back to the vital person whose job it is to carry out cleaning tasks. Gone are the days of vacuum cleaners with trip hazard power cords.

“Why not use available staff to clean residents’ rooms and bathrooms and use autonomous machines to clean these common areas after hours?”

The latest battery powered vacuum cleaners – and robots – have HEPA filters that supply hospital grade exhaust air filtration. This means the air being exhausted from the machine can be cleaner than the air being sucked into the machine. Over 80 per cent of all vacuum cleaner repairs are to the power lead where the lead has been run over by the machine or caught under a door or incorrectly wound up. Ditch the lead and go battery and also save money on power usage.

AI in the bathroom

Available now are hand towel and toilet paper dispensers that can advise you when they are nearly empty. It means that the staff know when a dispenser needs refilling, saving the time required to check each dispenser and the need to leave spare paper just in case it might run out before it is next checked. It also advises the cleaner of how much toilet paper and hand towel will be required on their trolley for their shift and saves them returning to the storeroom to get more supplies.

Automating tray delivery

Resident care and catering staff can also get assistance from robots that carry trays. A recently released robot is designed to carry trays of food, drinks and so on. The kitchen staff can load the robot and direct it to take its cargo to designated areas. Australian trials are currently being carried out in canteen areas where the dirty plates etcetera are loaded onto the robot and taken to the wash up area.

A situation where a tray-carrying robot could prove invaluable is when a person is in isolation. It would save the personal protective equipment required for the staff to use and discard with each entry into the room. The human interaction with residents is vital but a bit of help from AI can make a huge difference to the staff shortages being currently experienced.

It’s a situation organisations like the Committee for Economic Development of Australia estimate will be with us for the foreseeable future.

John Taylor is an expert advisor to the cleaning industry with international acknowledgements in training and techniques whose primary focus is on consultancy to the aged and health care sectors

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