Brain Corp just wrapped up their customer deployment data analysis for 2020, and after a thorough review of the data, the company summarized a few interesting facts from the year.

In 2020:

• BrainOS-powered robots freed up 3.3 million hours of productivity for global organizations
• The number of robots deployed across all the various applications segments grew 4x (300%)
• The total square footage cleaned automatically by BrainOS-powered robots grew 6x
• Daytime usage of robotic scrubbers increased 46.2%

Currently, BrainOS-powered robots operate primarily in floor-scrubbing tasks. The company has partnered with several of the leading floor cleaning equipment suppliers and has deployed around 15,000 autonomous systems to date. This is the largest population of autonomous floor cleaning robots on the planet.

According to Josh Baylin, Brain Corp’s Senior Director of Strategy, “During 2020, the company observed a 127% increase in deployment of their large form factor scrubbing machines in retail companies such as Sam’s Club and Snuck’s Markets. This growth is likely tied to the pandemic, and the requirement for more frequent facility cleaning cycles.” Baylin went on to observe that the company also “witnessed the increase in daytime usage of robotic scrubbers, as retailers became more confident in the safe operation of autonomous floor scrubbers and wanted to project the image of cleanliness to reassure the buying public.”

The company’s robot portfolio also covers other application areas, including material handling tasks and the smaller form factor “Whiz” floor cleaning robot from Softbank. The largest opportunity for Brain Corp in 2020, however, was the large format autonomous floor cleaners.

Baylin also commented, “The pandemic changed the retail market in 2020. Retailers needed to project an image of ‘measurable clean’, while also helping to reduce the potential for the store to be a transmission vector for the virus. As a result of this change in mindset, retailers started taking active measures with their customers’ best interests in mind. Autonomous floor scrubbers are able to continuously clean high traffic areas of the store.”

“​The other key metric that we observed was that the percentage of daytime usage of robotic scrubbers by retailers increased by 46.2% during 2020”, said Baylin. “In the past, the floor cleaning task was typically done in the late night hours, to prepare the store for the next day. Brain Corp was one of the first autonomous floor cleaning solutions to come to market, and now we have the largest population in production.”

The system use data that was reviewed by Baylin and his team was pooled and compiled across the entire population of deployed BrainOS-powered robots. The company uses the data to look for trends and to prioritize system improvements. The most positive signal is that the company is able to follow the increasing usage of their systems that are helping essential business contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

Within each customer site, the management team is able to view daily and weekly reports about the cleaning operations and be assured that they are doing a thorough job of cleaning the facility.