What you should know
- Skyline Robotics’ window washing robot, Ozmo, has worked on major Manhattan buildings in partnership with the city’s largest commercial window cleaner, Platinum, and real estate giant The Durst Organization.
- The machine is part of a new wave of technology that can replicate human labor.
- Skyline Robotics has been working on the robot since 2017.
Skyline Robotics is revolutionizing the century-old practice of window washing with a new technology that the startup hopes will redefine a risky industry.
Its window cleaning robot, Ozmo, is already operational in Tel Aviv and New York, and has worked on major Manhattan buildings such as 10 Hudson Yards, 383 Madison, 825 3rd Avenue and 7 World Trade Center in collaboration with the largest commercial storefront in the city the cleaner Platinum and the real estate giant The Durst Organization.
The machine is suspended from the side of a tall building. A robotic arm with a brush on the end cleans the window following instructions from a LiDAR camera, which uses laser technology to map environments in 3D. The camera maps the exterior of the building and identifies the parameters of the windows.
“What the LiDAR is actually doing as the basket goes down is painting itself a picture of the facade it’s facing,” said President and COO Ross Blum.
Although the Ozmo is controlled by a human operator at the top of the building, Blum said the robot could be operated entirely remotely.
“That person, other than regulation, doesn’t really have to be there for our sake,” Blum said. “We could, in theory, control Ozmo remotely from different parts of the world.”
reverse osmosis delete contaminants from the water, hence the name Ozmo. According to Blum, this makes the cleaning process more efficient.
“We don’t need a separate squeegee and a separate brush to get a perfectly clean window,” he said. “It’s a movement.”
The current cost of the Ozmo is about $500,000, which has payback in three to five years for building owners, according to Skyline Robotics board member and Platinum CEO James Halpin.
A changing workforce
The machine is part of a new wave of technology that can replicate human labor. In recent months, AI innovations like ChatGPT have dominated the headlines, raising questions about the vulnerabilities jobs in customer service, writing, and computer programming jobs.
A report The World Economic Forum’s 2020 report states that 85 million jobs will be displaced by 2025 due to the “robot revolution,” but that 97 million jobs will be created that will require “retraining and training.”
Maintenance and construction jobs, such as window washing, were classified as having a “medium” proportion of tasks (30% to 70%) amenable to automation, according to A study 2016 conducted by the Brookings Institution.
Platinum’s Halpin said his company was interested in supporting Ozmo because of a shortage of workers in the field of high-bay window washing.
“Currently, we are experiencing labor shortages in all of the actual blue-collar fields in New York City,” Halpin said. “We could hire another 20% just to keep up with the current job we have right now.”
Both Halpin and Blum said their goal is ultimately not to replace human workers, but to “retrain and reassign” window washers to operate the technology.
But logistically, Ozmo reduces the number of people needed to clean a building from a team of three or four human window cleaners to a single operator.
Ozmo has a few window washers, like Jose Nieves, a 23-year industry veteran and Rockefeller Center window washer, worried about his livelihood. He believes that the dangers of window washing are exaggerated and that human labor should be preserved.
“Of course, there are dangers with our profession, but we are trained workers who take those risks very seriously, like many dangerous jobs that exist in this country,” Nieves said. “Aren’t there potential hazards associated with a robot operating heavy equipment hundreds of feet above people’s heads?”
Nieves is represented by SEIU 32BJ, the real estate services union for many East Coast workers. According to the organization, there are between 500 and 550 unionized window cleaners in New York City who earn $31.69 per hour during the peak summer season.
“As a society, we shouldn’t be cutting costs on the backs of workers,” Nieves said. “I would say that we have been doing a great job without these robots. Don’t fix it unless it’s broken.”
robot-human collaboration
A growing legion of futurists, like Aleksandra Przegalińska, a senior research associate at Harvard’s Labor and Work Life Program, studies how humans and robots can collaborate, and specifically how machines can take on tasks that are tedious or dangerous for humans.
Since Ozmo’s technology is so new, he said it’s hard to fully assess, but the opportunity to move human labor out of a dangerous field is attractive.
She cites an example when machines were deployed, such as moxito deliver medicines to infected patients during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Certainly, in those areas where your health, your existence as a human being, is at risk, using a machine, a robot is something worth considering,” Przegalińska said.
Skyline Robotics has been working on the robot since 2017 and the company raised 6.5 million dollars in its pre-Series A funding, plus a grant from the Israeli government. In all, it has raised $12.9 million to date and closed a $3.35 million funding round on Aug. 7, according to a company news release.
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Correction: An earlier version of this story misrepresented Ross Blum’s title and the amount of money Skyline Robotics has raised. He is the president and COO, and has raised $12.9 million to date.
This article was originally published in English by Molly Kaiser for our sister network CNBC.com. For more from CNBC enter here.
