Like many other industries, the facility services sector is facing a growing labour shortage. At the same time, robotics technology is developing rapidly. For CSU, one of the Netherlands’ major facility service providers, this is reason to actively explore how robots and AI could take on a structural role in cleaning and other facility-related work. Rocking Robots spoke with Kos Fourkiotis, Innovation Manager at CSU and T-Zorg, both part of Total Care, about the opportunities, challenges and future of robotics in the facility services market.
As Innovation Manager, Fourkiotis is involved in a broad range of transformation projects. The underlying philosophy is not to wait and see what happens, but to actively influence developments. CSU does not want to respond passively to changes in the market, but instead looks for innovations that can move both the company and the wider sector forward.
Robotics is one of the most prominent themes on that agenda. According to Fourkiotis, the combination of a shrinking labour pool and a rapidly maturing high-tech industry makes it logical for CSU to closely follow developments in robotics and assess where the technology could add value to the facility services of the future.
Vacuuming and scrubbing robots as a learning process
CSU is already gaining practical experience with robotics. At several locations, the company uses autonomous vacuuming and floor-scrubbing robots for floor maintenance. This journey started more than ten years ago and has evolved on several fronts. It is not only the technology that has changed, but also the organisational culture surrounding it.
An autonomous floor-cleaning robot that collects data effectively becomes a new type of colleague. Integrating such a system into existing working processes therefore requires careful consideration.
Results vary depending on the situation. In some environments, the robots already perform well and make a measurable contribution to productivity. In others, the impact remains limited. For Fourkiotis, however, much of the value lies in what CSU has learned along the way. From his perspective as Innovation Manager, the organisation has built up extensive knowledge over the years about how to introduce, operate and manage this technology effectively.
Robotics requires a multidisciplinary approach
Companies looking to deploy robots successfully should not approach the issue from a single starting point, Fourkiotis argues. Robotics projects require a broad, multidisciplinary perspective.
One important factor is the human side of the equation. How does a cleaning employee experience suddenly having to work alongside an advanced technological system such as a robot? According to Fourkiotis, this should not be underestimated, particularly in a sector employing many people with limited formal education or whose first language is not Dutch. The transition requires proper attention and support.
Operational performance must also be evaluated critically. Does the robot clean to the required standard, and does it improve or consistently maintain the desired level of quality? Financial, commercial and legal considerations also come into play, alongside the risks associated with deploying robots.
All of these dimensions need to be understood before deployment can be scaled up. Fourkiotis believes that the greatest opportunity for the sector lies precisely in developing this kind of integrated approach.
Humanoids could become useful, but human form is not always necessary
Humanoid robots were also part of the discussion. Fourkiotis expects them eventually to have an impact on everyday life and become functionally useful, although he stresses that it is difficult to predict exactly when this will happen.
For floor maintenance, however, he questions the added value of a human-shaped robot with legs, balance mechanisms and a head. Many facility tasks do not necessarily require a human form, and reproducing that form could make performing a relatively straightforward task unnecessarily complex and expensive.
At the same time, he does not rule out a future in which humanoid robots become cheaper and increasingly multifunctional, more closely resembling the versatility of human workers. The picture several decades from now could therefore look very different from what is realistic within the next five or ten years.
With the rise of physical AI, in which data and artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly intertwined with robotics, Fourkiotis sees a particular gap between technology developers and the people who ultimately have to use these systems.
He would like to see more creativity directed towards the question of what people and society actually need, rather than allowing development to be driven primarily by what is technically possible. More agile robots combined with smarter AI applications, he argues, could ultimately contribute to how society functions and to the quality of services it provides.
