EVALUATION OF ROBOTIC CLEANING TECHNOLOGIES: PRESERVING A BRITISH ICONIC BUILDING

Abstract

The engineering building of the University Leicester built-in 1963 has been a British icon for decades now. Applications of Robotic technologies are uprising nowadays, which provides a contingency to manipulate the benefits of robotics for executing challenging and precarious facade cleaning processes. This paper surveys the facade cleaning robotic technologies exist in the market. It exhibits the comparative analysis of four notorious robotic facade cleaning solutions namely Sky Pro, Gekko, BFMR (Building Façade Maintenance Robot) and Sirius_c. The comparison is executed using Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) techniques. This study analyses the performance of the robots based on the critical parameters such as water consumption, cleaning efficiency, cleaning dimensions and ease of implementation. Although none of these robotic solutions are implemented off the shelf, some adaptation on these solutions is necessary for the development of robotic techniques work successfully in real time. This paper proposes a hybrid robotic solution combining the vacuum pump adhesion and wheeled locomotion for the effective cleaning of the complex external building structure based on the MCDA and QFD analysis. It highlights the significant future research directions in this field.