Gecko-collie: Homecleaning Automation of Floors, Walls and Cupboards

The domain of food processing is requiring the replacement of human front-end operators to grant standard cleaning conditions and to achieve health and safety thresholds, according to Authorities rules. The development of instrumental robotic equipment is considered with interest, but, at the moment, actual implementations face lags in their acceptation. The paper considers a co-operating built-up, based on modular devices, properly tailored to given sets of duties; the robotic rigs can be enabled at different levels of sophistication, each time covering further tasks. The example case deals with the cleaning of community kitchens, severally assuring floor sweep-out, cabinets tidy up, surfaces steam washing; duty-driven fixtures are designed, with attention on operation leanness, to avoid not strictly necessary jobs. The developed set-up characterises by a tender fixture (Collie) and a climbing module (Gecko), each one with proper operation capabilities. Architectural feasibility and functional behaviour are dealt with by means of digital mock-ups and virtual reality testing. The investigation leads to the novel Char-robot concept, namely, a modular lay-out, with the expected operation capabilities and the effectiveness of, both, duty bent and expansible modularity.