The R&D team of B+N Reference Zrt., Lab/Da Innovations, participated as an exhibitor and speaker at the InterClean trade fair in Amsterdam this May. While there were no significant developments in intelligent solutions at the trade fair, there were advances in applications for monitoring the cleaning process. The Lab/Da team also discovered a new application for its DNA sequencing pilot project at the event.
On the first day of the InterClean Amsterdam 2024 trade fair, Péter Zalka, head of Lab/Da Innovations at B+N Reference Zrt. gave a presentation on healthcare environmental monitoring with DNA sequencing and UV-C disinfection auditing based on 3D point-cloud calculation. The presentation attracted a good number of listeners, who later also visited the Lab/Da stand.
A live test in the Robot Arena
“We were only able to install our R3900 robot in the Robot Arena in the morning, immediately before the first demonstration, which András Vezér and Csaba Csathó perfectly handled,” – says Peter Zalka, adding: “Here we tried the single-segment walk-in and the trained route walk-in, which will be implemented with the next software updates.”
A couple of new companies appeared in the Robot Arena with the addition of smaller cleaning robots. Still, the intelligent solutions have not improved significantly compared to two years ago. “The robot did not always find spilt coffee on the white floor, nor did it clean up completely,” – Zalka reports.
Innovations and plans
At the same time, applications that monitor the cleaning process have improved and simplified a lot in two years. Still, the application’s primary limitation, i.e., automatically entering local data into the system, has not yet been solved. “In this area, we have so far come across one forward-looking tool that can record the presence of a cleaning device on a proximity basis, like a virtual access gate,” – Peter Zalka points out.
Two years ago, small mop-sized scrubbing machines were a novelty, but they have been on show in large numbers this year. These machines can significantly speed up cleaning work while improving quality. However, price and relatively short operating times can be limitations.
Disc scrubbers and vibrating head scrubbers, which started appearing in the last few years, were rarely in the manufacturers’ range. “We are looking forward to fitting the first sample unit to a Robin, our in-house-developed autonomous cleaning robot, and seeing if the expected significant reduction in water consumption is real. Reducing water usage would greatly reduce downtime, which is currently a bottleneck in a robot’s usage” – adds the expert.
“At the same time, we discovered a new application for our DNA sequencing pilot project at the exhibition: the process can be used not only in healthcare but also in the food industry,” – Peter Zalka outlines the possible plans.