Google launched cleaning robots in its office. They wipe the tables and open the doors. PHOTO

On November 19, 2021, Google began using trained robots at its San Francisco offices to perform easy cleaning tasks such as sorting garbage, removing dust and dirt from flat surfaces, moving chairs, opening doors and much more.

Google launched cleaning robots in its office

The robot cleaner was created by Alphabet - Everyday Robot, which specializes in experimental development. The devices in question are in fact flexible multifunctional manipulators on wheels attached to the central tower. On top of the tower is a head with cameras and machine vision sensors, and on the side is a rotating lidar unit for navigation.

Robot from Everyday Robot

As of November 2021, we are using a fleet of more than 100 prototype robots that autonomously perform a number of useful tasks in our offices. The same robot that sorts the garbage can now be equipped with a scraper to wipe the tables, and the same grip that grabs the cups can learn to open the doors, "said Everyday Robot chief roboticist Hans Peter Brøndmo.

Everyday Robot robots wipe tables and open doors

As Brondmo points out, these bots were first seen in garbage sorting when Alphabet introduced the Everyday Robot team in 2019, only at that time the project was called Alphabet X. Everyday Robot promises that machine learning will finally allow robots to work in unstructured environments, such as homes and offices. Ultimately, the company wants to build robots that can be taught to perform new tasks without writing code from scratch. Google considers this technology as an auxiliary resource for cleaning, which can reduce costs by partially automating this process. Such a combined method seems to the company effective in terms of cleaning quality and economy.^[1]

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