SANTA CLARA, CA—With the labor shortage, hotel properties are on the lookout for solutions that maximize employees’ time. Techmetics, a robotics company founded in Singapore with an office here, has a solution that can streamline operations by transporting laundry to and from laundry facilities.
“All of our products are mobile delivery robots,” said Mathan Muthupillai, CEO of the company.
One of Techmetics’ creations is a high payload robotic linen transporter. “The robot can carry up to 250 pounds from the housekeeping department to every floor,” said Muthupillai. “We deploy two or three robots in the back-of-house area of the hotel with various trolleys, depending on the number of floors and locations. Our robot can go automatically, engage the cart, bring that cart to the delivery level, leave the cart and come back.”
The advantage, he said, is that no one needs to be there at the receiving end to collect the items.
A few hotels in the U.S. will be launching the robots soon, Muthupillai said, but they are already being used in properties in Asia and Australia.
By using these transporter robots, hotel employees are freed up to do other tasks. “Our aim is to replace the runner jobs and have staff focus on the other aspects of the hotel,” he said. “If you have the staff push the trolley, that is not as skilled a job. Our aim is only replacing that aspect of human activity, so that time can be used for other skilled jobs.” HB