Explanation: Room attendants will be equipped with one robot assistant during their shift. The room attendants will follow a unique protocol, developed by Maidbot, which outlines the most efficient order of tasks. Once ready, the room attendant will place Rosie in the room and input the room number using a small wearable remote. Then, Rosie will run completely autonomously, vacuuming the room until it beeps—notifying the room attendant that it has finished. What makes Rosie different than today’s alternatives – such as a Roomba? Rosie is more efficient, powerful, and durable than a Roomba or other household robotic cleaners. We have developed a unique algorithm that maps out a room and saves that map in Rosie’s internal memory. With this algorithm, Rosie will memorize the layout indefinitely so the robot only needs to map the rooms once. In environments like hotels, mapping a room allows Rosie to be more versatile and efficient in a variety of areas such as ballrooms and hallways. In addition to the algorithm, we will supply valuable data to hotels including the ‘time it takes to clean a room’, ‘when a room was cleaned’, and ‘how many rooms are being cleaned.’ Our robots will also create heat maps of rooms’ dirtiest areas, which will be used to forecast seasonal focus areas and the necessary housekeeping workforce. This data enables management to better understand their guests’ behavior and analyze patterns of different guest and room types.
Each unit is leased for $419 a month with a $2,000 one-time integration fee per hotel. This results in revenues of $57,310 for the average 200-room hotel – giving Maidbot a potential of $1.1b in annual revenues from our initial target market of 20,000 hotels. Each robot costs $2,087 to manufacture, sell, and ship to the hotel; a figure which can be cut in half depending on the scale of production.
Inspiration: Two things inspired me:
1) After watching The Jetsons on TV as a kid, I was inspired to bring Rosie the Robot to life because of how many issues it would solve around time.
2) I worked as a room attendant – or housekeeper – in a hotel where I learned about the 3 major issues (highest variable cost in any hotel, room attendants have the highest injury rates in the service sector, and over 55% of hotel guests complain their room was dirty). I spoke with General Managers and dozens of executives to validate these issues and use the information to determine the best way to solve the problems.
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