Couple
of months back, we at Vision Cleaning tried using automated commercial
high rise window cleaners to clean high rise windows. Our purpose back
then was to test these robots with the intention of incorporating them
into our commercial high rise window cleaning service especially for
dangerous high rise jobs.
Two months and 19 attempts later, we’ve given up. Here’s why:
Setting up the commercial high rise
window cleaning robot takes about as much time as setting up the tools,
equipment and cleaning platform for humans to do the job. The highland window cleaner
needed to be properly aligned and its grip to the glass and non-glass
surface had to be properly tested before letting it go. The automated
window cleaning robot needed to be always released from the top so that
the weight of the wire does not detach the robot from the glass surface.
The biggest challenge we faced using
robots in high-rise window cleaning situations was the fact that a high
rise building or commercial front, is not always 100% glass but usually a
combination of glass and metal or glass and concrete or some other
fancy material.
Before we let the commercial high rise
window cleaning robot begin, we need to ensure that the surface will
provide sufficient adhesive force for the robot to cling to. Also, to
provide an element of safety, we needed to anchor the robot tether
firmly to the roof as there was always a danger that the robot or
automated commercial high rise window cleaner might fall off in which
case, at the very least we would have lost an expensive piece of
equipment and in a worst case scenario, people might get injured or even
killed. A Domestic window cleaner
can weigh anything from 5kgs to 25kgs. Imagine it dropping on somebody
from say 20 stories up. The potential for serious injury or death is
very real.
Setup and safety issues apart, the main reason we decided against using automated Professional window cleaning services
robots was the fact that as yet, they just don’t do a good job. A robot
window cleaning device has no way of distinguishing a dusty window from
a grime covered dirty window. It treats all glass surfaces alike and
therein lays the ultimate problem to using robots for cleaning windows.
Also, unlike humans, the robot has no way of sensing how much pressure
its cleaning brush can exert over the glass. In our experience, window
panes are not uniformly dirty and therefore treating each and every pane
the same does not do a good job of cleaning windows at all.
The ultimate test came when we cleaned
two identical glass surfaces of a large shopping mall. One surface was
cleaned by our human crew while the other was cleaned by the robotic professional window cleaners.
The manager at the mall was far from impressed with the robot. He said
and I quote, “good attempt by the robot but your human crew would have
to redo the part the robot did”. And that folks was the last time we
used an automated window cleaner. When it comes to window cleaning only
humans can do a job that will be appreciated by fellow humans.
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