Unified School District of De Pere approves new $89K robot janitor

DE PERE—Meet the future Unified School District team member who may or may not be called Scrubby McScrubface.

The Unified School District of De Pere school board unanimously approved spending $89,000 on an X6 ROVR autonomous floor scrubbing device for the high school.

It will save money, free up cleaning crews to do more important things, and enable them to meet cleaning goals even in the midst of back-to-back extracurricular activities at the school, say its proponents.

“We call it a co-bot because it's a co-worker; we're looking for it to help it take some of those remedial tasks, rudimentary tasks off of (cleaning staff’s) plate so they can focus on higher-value tasks,” Director of Buildings and Grounds Superintendent Noah Wentland said. That includes things like sanitizing areas that are touched frequently, cleaning science classrooms, attending to bathrooms, setting up or taking down bleachers, dusting high areas. He presented the idea to the school board recently, along with the district finance director.

Wentland said the school’s almost 300,000 square feet of floor space currently takes more than six hours between two shifts for human employees to scrub and polish with the district’s manually operated floor scrubber, the Windsor Chariot. 

The Chariot is a stand-on scrubber that requires a human operator.

At 12 years old, it’s nearing the end of its life.

A new one would cost $25,000. Add to that a custodian’s wages for a year of operating it (1,560 hours at $50 per hour) and a ride-on Chariot would cost $103,000 the first year, according to Wentland.

The autonomous scrubber stands four feet long, 31.5 inches wide and 3 feet 10 inches tall.

Its lithium-ion batteries are warranted for five years or 2,000 charges.

It can clean 75,000 square feet on one 25-gallon tank of cleaning solution.

When its battery or the solution run out, it sends its human minder a message saying it will be returning to its home base for recharging.

The only interactions its minder needs to have with it are with filling the solution tank and sending it out on its mission.

It won’t supplant any of its human colleagues, according to District Finance Director Dawn Foeller.

The district plans to keep the same level of cleaning staff; Foeller said the district has been “squeezed” by large athletic and other events in the evenings that require setup and cleanup, as well as being short staffed. 

“We just have not added to the staff,” Foeller said.“This (floor cleaning) is like the last thing that they do; this usually takes a back seat. So we will be able to be on schedule and have our floors clean.”

“It should be able to do all the scrubbing we're currently doing in the school without losing anything, but also being able to gain those six hours to work on some other things,” Wentland said.

To onboard students with the idea of a robotic cleaner, Wentland said they’d host a naming contest for the machine so students could establish familiarity with it.

Which is when Board President Adam Clayton joked that it could end up being called Scrubby McScrubface, a reference to a British polar research vessel that was named Boaty McBoatface via poll in 2016.

“This can help us fill a void in the floor scrubbing and floor care,” Wentland said. “The technology is getting smarter and smarter and and just more attainable, as well, as far as cost.”