13th July 2020: Robots have started to impact our lives and are the need of the hour, with respect to the current pandemic situation. From cleaning floors, swimming pools, to serving at restaurants and greeting at airports, they are everywhere. These little technological wonders are fast invading our world to make it an easier place to live in. Infact, a study has revealed that service robots in hotels could help boost the hospitality and travel industry, which had somewhere taken a backseat during this Covid-19 outbreak.

With shopping malls, airports, railway stations, offices, restaurants opening up, deployment of these non–human devices is needed for the hour. These tiny robots can be the “New Normal” for maintaining proper social distancing, hygiene and constant monitoring. In the days to come, these contactless technologies will revolutionise the way travel and hospitality sector approach for the post COVID world.

Many of the commercial establishments like Hotels, Hospitals have already started to deploy them to limit human interventions. For instance – Hotel chains like Hyatt, Dr Reddy’s, and ITC are already taking help of floor cleaning and pool cleaning robots from Milagrow Humantech, to disinfect and maintain hygiene as they started operations, FabHotels, one of the leading budget hotel chains in India has also been taking various initiatives and implementing a host of measures for its guests and employees.

These floor disinfecting robots can navigate and sanitize the floors without any human intervention. It can destroy COVID spores on floor surfaces (if any) using sodium hypochlorite solution, as recommended by ICMR. As commercial establishments started opening for the public again but following these numerous measures, it would be interesting to witness how these devices will shift the approach to a contactless world.