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Robot ou humain ?

Commercial floor cleaning

Cleaner with a walk-behind autoscrubber vs Autonomous floor scrubber

Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits. Méthodologie · Bilan des prévisions

Humain · Par an28 817 $USStaff cleaner
Robot · Par an27 931 $USBuy a robot scrubber
Délai de retour sur investissement45 mois
Année de basculedéjàBase-case year (earliest to latest across scenarios)

On these numbers it is close: decide on the things that are not cost. The robot would sit idle most of the time; it pays off at higher volume or longer hours. Payback is longer than three years, which is longer than many robot contracts and some robot companies.

États-Unis · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

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Charge de travail
Hypothèse

Square feet scrubbed per day: a big-box store or small warehouse. Use yours.

Hypothèse

Hours per day the floor is available for cleaning.

Hypothèse

Cleaning days per month.

Hypothèse

Active months per year.

Personnel
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS OEWS May 2025 national median hourly wage, SOC 37-2011.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Wages and salaries were 70.0% of total employer compensation cost for private industry workers in June 2026 (ECEC), so total cost = wage / 0.70.

ilostat.ilo.org

Nominal 4.4% a year, 2015-2025 (ILOSTAT hourly earnings).

ISSA, as reproduced by Parish Supply

ISSA practical rate for a 20-inch walk-behind autoscrubber, sq ft per hour.

Robot
Hypothèse Avidbots

Robot sq ft per hour relative to a person with a walk-behind scrubber. Vendor theoretical maxima are about 3.6x (Avidbots Neo 2: 33,583 ft²/h); real floors with turns, obstacles and tank changes run far below that.

Calculé RobotLAB (reseller)

Midpoint of RobotLAB's Gausium purchase range ($29,600-$95,880). Small units sit at the bottom, ride-on-class at the top.

MLive

Midpoint of the quoted $2,250-$2,900/month Avidbots Neo lease (January 2024).

Calculé RobotLAB (reseller)

Midpoint of Gausium RaaS $829-$2,669/month (36-month term).

Hypothèse

Site mapping, training and docking setup per site.

Hypothèse

Yearly maintenance and consumables (pads, squeegees, batteries) as a share of purchase price.

Hypothèse

Useful life in years.

Hypothèse

Share of the cleaning window the robot is actually cleaning (charging, tank changes).

Hypothèse

Share of robot work lost to faults that a person has to cover.

Hypothèse

Share of the area robots skip (corners, under racking, spills, stairs) that a person still cleans.

Hypothèse

Minutes of staff time per robot-hour (start, empty, refill, rescue).

Hypothèse

kWh per robot operating hour.

Hypothèse

Electricity price per kWh (USD). Check your bill; energy is rarely a big line.

Finances
Hypothèse

Annual financing / discount rate. Nobody publishes yours; 8% is a round mid-2026 commercial borrowing guess.

Hypothèse

Years in the NPV comparison.

Hypothèse

Share of a human service price that is labour (rises with wages). Used to escalate and to adjust US service prices to other countries.

Hypothèse

Share of a robot service price that is labour (pilot, technician). The rest is equipment, which learning curves make cheaper.

Hypothèse

Share of a lease or RaaS fee that pays for hardware (learns down). The rest is service and support (moves with wages).

Download these results (CSV)

Résultats

OptionPar moisPar anPer unit (sq ft)Coût initialDélai de retour sur investissementBreak-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
Humain Staff cleaner Référence 2 401 $US28 817 $US0,003 $US— — — —
Robot Buy a robot scrubber 2 328 $US27 931 $US0,003 $US64 740 $US 45 mois 32 %
Utilisation 34 %
 13 187 $US
Robot Lease a robot scrubber 3 175 $US38 098 $US0,004 $US2 000 $US jamais 48 %
Utilisation 34 %
 -30 439 $US
Robot Robot scrubber as a service 2 349 $US28 186 $US0,003 $US2 000 $US 21 mois 33 %
Utilisation 34 %
 10 298 $US

What moves the answer most

Each bar shows the 5-year NPV of the best robot option when one input moves to the low or high end of its range, with the rest held at your values.

5-year NPV vs baseline: Buy a robot scrubber5-year NPV vs baseline: Buy a robot scrubberWorkloadlow value: 15000 → -48 410 $UShigh value: 100000 → 161 020 $USRobot purchase pricelow value: 29600 → 57 223 $UShigh value: 95880 → -30 849 $USHuman output per hourlow value: 6500 → 55 248 $UShigh value: 12000 → -9 201 $USUseful life or contractlow value: 3 → -22 168 $UShigh value: 7 → 25 219 $USHourly wagelow value: 14.168000000000001 → -6 613 $UShigh value: 21.252 → 32 988 $USWork that stays humanlow value: 0.05 → 24 782 $UShigh value: 0.3 → -4 205 $USMaintenance per yearlow value: 0.04 → 23 501 $UShigh value: 0.15 → -4 862 $USEmployer on-cost multiplierlow value: 1.2790000000000001 → 2 795 $UShigh value: 1.579 → 23 579 $USSupervisionlow value: 2 → 17 733 $UShigh value: 15 → 2 960 $US13 187 $USlow valuehigh valueSource: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/commercial-floor-cleaning/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.

Cost per unit to 2035

Real terms (today's money). Robot hardware follows Wright's law; wages follow each country's history. Shaded band: robots-slow to robots-fast scenarios. Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits.

ChartCoût humain par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès rapide), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès lent). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/commercial-floor-cleaning/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.0,00 $US0,001 $US0,002 $US0,003 $US2026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / sq ftscenario rangeCoût humain par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/commercial-floor-cleaning/). Modelled…

Année de bascule: déjà

What the spreadsheet misses

Sécurité
Fewer slips while floors are wet if the robot cleans after hours; a 300 kg machine near shoppers needs working sensors and sensible routes.
Qualité
Robots are consistent on open floor and log what they cleaned. They miss edges and spot spills unless someone follows up.
Flexibilité
A cleaner handles bathrooms, bins and the unexpected; a scrubber scrubs.
Edge cases
Cluttered, changing layouts (pallets left in aisles) kill robot productivity fast.
Customer experience
Usually neutral to positive in stores; noise at night is a non-issue.
Jobs and redeployment
The common pattern is redeploying cleaners to detail work rather than cutting hours one-for-one; plan the redeployment before the robot arrives.
Réglementation
No licence needed. Check lease terms for damage liability.

Voir aussi

Sources de cette page

Les notes et les sources sont en anglais ; la version anglaise fait foi.

  1. ISSA 612 cleaning times: 20-inch walk-behind automatic scrubber about 9,274 sq ft per hour; wet mop about 1,333-1,429 ISSA, as reproduced by Parish Supply, 2026-10
  2. Neo 2 disc cleaning head technical specifications: maximum theoretical productivity 33,583 ft²/h (26-inch) Avidbots, 2026-10 · vendor
  3. Gausium autonomous scrubbers: purchase $29,600-$95,880; RaaS $829-$2,669/month on a 36-month term RobotLAB (reseller), 2026-10 · vendor
  4. Avidbots Neo lease $2,250-$2,900/month, as quoted by an Avidbots representative MLive, 2024-01
  5. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (median hourly wage by occupation) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025-05
  6. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026: wages and salaries 70.0% of private-industry compensation (series CMU2020000000000P) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-06
  7. Mean nominal hourly earnings of employees by sex and occupation (ISCO-08), DF_EAR_EHRA_SEX_OCU_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), from national labour force and earnings surveys, 2025
  8. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev): Germany 2022-2025, total labour cost vs wages and salaries per hour Eurostat, 2025
  9. Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026 (employer Class 1 NIC 15% above £5,000) HM Revenue & Customs, 2025-04-06
  10. 令和6年賃金構造基本統計調査 (Basic Survey on Wage Structure 2024), table 1 by occupation Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (via e-Stat), 2024-06
  11. Average monthly earnings of employees by sex and economic activity, DF_EAR_EMTA_SEX_ECO_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), 2022
  12. Average annual wage of employed persons in urban units in 2024 (by position and by region) National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2025-05-20
  13. Euro foreign exchange reference rates (cross rates to USD), via Frankfurter European Central Bank, 2026-10-23
  14. Wright, T. P. (1936). Factors affecting the cost of airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 3(4), 122-128 Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 1936
  15. Nagy, B., Farmer, J. D., Bui, Q. M., & Trancik, J. E. (2013). Statistical basis for predicting technological progress. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e52669 (62 technologies; Wright's law among the best hindcasters; errors grow with horizon) PLoS ONE, 2013