Robots introduced to help clean floors at two Welsh hospitals
Mark Mansfield
Robots are being used to clean floors at two Welsh hospitals in a move aimed at freeing up housekeeping staff for more detailed work.
The automated cleaners have been introduced at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff and University Hospital Llandough in the Vale of Glamorgan, where they have covered more than 246,000 square metres of floor space in their first three months.
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said the machines were introduced in May and are being used in corridors and departments across both sites.
They are intended to work alongside housekeeping staff rather than replace them, taking on routine floor cleaning while employees concentrate on other tasks and higher-priority clinical areas.
The health board said cleaning hospital corridors manually can take a member of staff up to four hours, while department floors can take between two and three hours.
Using the robots can cut the time required by around half, according to the health board.
The machines use sensors and pre-programmed routes to navigate the hospitals and can sweep floors, scrub hard surfaces and collect dirty water.
They are designed to detect and avoid obstacles in busy areas and will stop automatically if a person or object moves into their path.
The health board said reducing the amount of repetitive floor cleaning undertaken by housekeeping staff could also reduce physical strain.
Geoff Walsh, Director of Capital, Estates and Facilities, said: “Capital, Estates and Facilities continues to explore new technologies that can help improve efficiency and maintain standards across our hospital sites.
“The introduction of the new automated floor cleaning robots are already providing significant benefit to housekeeping colleagues, allowing them to focus on other priorities, including providing support in areas affected by Infection, Prevention and Control outbreaks.
“I would like to thank our Housekeeping leads for identifying and evaluating this relatively new technology, which is already making a positive difference to the service they provide.”
The health board said the robots would continue to support housekeeping teams across both hospital sites.
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These cleaning robots are also in supermarkets as well.
It sounds more cost effective but I don’t know how it helps entry into job market for the less skilled and less educated person.
Jobs for the bots.
Got these a Gatwick. Spend all day stopped as people get in their way
I wonder if someone is designing a robot to make managers and bosses redundant. It’s always the lower ranks of any profession that takes a hit!
Cymru is well behind the curve on both robotics and the implications of less jobs.
Other countries have understood that 60% of the jobs just won’t exist within 10 years, they’re making plans, we still appear to be stuck in the fear and sitting on hands phase.
Since Brexit, recruiting staff has become near impossible, so robots are a much needed tool now.
Perhaps someone on here can answer me this please. When the whiz-kids have completely automated/robotised industry and other occupations and everyone is unemployed how are we going to earn money to live and buy the products that robots are making?
The person to ask might be the Welsh Minister for AI – if we had one.
Oh that’s simple.
We just have to change our outdated and rather misguided attitudes to work and labour, then implement a ubi.
It’s been researched heavily since the early 90’s and in most cases it worked out a considerably cheaper system than using traditional benefits based types.
Unfortunately the human race needs to adapt a little quicker, or things will go very bad very quickly.