DHL turns to Neo floor-scrubbing robots to keep warehouses hubs and terminals clean

Published: Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Keeping warehouses, hubs and terminals clean is a serious task for companies to ensure the good condition of products they keep and protect the safety and health of their staff. This may seem easy but the reality is cleaning is a daunting task and eats up a significant portion of any logistic company’s budget on an annual basis.

DHL, the world’s leading logistics company, is turning to robots to keep up cleanliness in all of its facilities worldwide.

In partnership with Avidbots, the company that brings robots to everyday life to expand human potential, is teaming up with DHL to install Neo floor-scrubbing robots in warehouses, hubs and terminals worldwide.

DHL said the goal is to bring the most advanced floor-cleaning automation tool to many of the thousands of sites DHL manages in 220 countries and territories. The new partnership builds on an earlier cooperation signed in 2019 between Avidbots and DHL in North America.

“We’re excited to deploy additional Avidbots at DHL warehouses across the globe, propelling our digitalization journey forward,” says Matthias Heutger, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Innovation & Commercial Development at DHL. “Floor-cleaning robots, while a simple innovation, reduces up to 80% of labor hours spent cleaning. This frees up our staff to engage in more value-adding, customer-centric work while driving our Strategy 2025 digitalization agenda forward.”

DHL said it will deploy Neo floor-scrubbing robots in warehouses it manages worldwide. Neo is used in many commercial locations and is especially suited to dynamic warehouse environments.

Using advanced 3D sensors, cameras, and AI, Neo autonomously navigates in warehouses, automatically detecting and avoiding obstacles such as humans, boxes, forklifts, and other robots. With Neo, warehouse floors are always clean and dust free, ensuring optimal operations as well as worker health and safety.

“DHL’s strong vote of confidence in the Neo floor-scrubbing robot is a testament to the hard work the entire Avidbots team has put into building the world’s only fully-autonomous floor-scrubbing robot,” said Faizan Shiekh, CEO and co-founder of Avidbots. “We’re thrilled to expand our partnership to deploy Neo robots in DHL warehouses on every continent.”

While most robotic floor-cleaning machines are simply manual models retrofitted with software that allows them to travel a few pre-programmed routes, Avidbots Neo is the only fully-autonomous, AI-driven commercial floor-scrubbing robot, delivering the industry’s highest quality floor maintenance.

Neo is currently deployed at hundreds of sites on five continents, including warehouses, airports, malls, hospitals, universities, manufacturing sites, and train stations. It has gained a particularly large customer base in the warehouse space as it is the only floor-scrubbing robot to effectively operate in dynamic environments with many continuously moving obstacles.

Other floor-cleaning robots must be pre-programmed to follow set routes, but this doesn’t work effectively in warehouses where goods and people are always on the move. Only Neo leverages the most advanced AI to understand its environment, avoiding large and small obstacles and re-routing its pathway on the fly.

DHL and Avidbots said they will work closely together over the next year to identify warehouses worldwide that could benefit from Neo floor-scrubbing robots. (Source: www.dhl.com)