CASE STUDYNEW YORK SCHOOL DISTRICT SETS NEW
STANDARD WITH ROBOTIC FLOOR CLEANER
Churchville-Chili Central School District near Rochester, New YorkBACKGROUND
Many schools have stressed the importanceof STEM topics like robotics. But in one K-12
school near Rochester, New York, robotics has
been elevated from theoretical to reality. To
help students build interest and skills in science,technology and engineering, the Churchville-Chili
Central School District has a noteworthy robotics
program that incorporates FIRST® Robotics
Concepts into classroom learning.
In 2019, enthusiasm for robotics spilled overto the operations and maintenance side of thedistrict that tested two self-driving robotic lawn
mowers on the high school’s grassy courtyards
to increase productivity and efficiency and freeup time for more hands-on work. The drive
toward robotics continued inside the schools
as the building and grounds team exploredautonomous floor scrubbers to clean theschool’s floors.
CHALLENGE
Churchville-Chili Central School District has
approximately 4,000 public school students

and 900 staff learning and working throughout
six K-12 buildings. Three of the six schools in
the Churchville-Chili Central School District
are connected, spanning nearly a half-mile ofcontiguous hallway. The Assistant Director of
Buildings and Grounds, Jim Ryan, oversees astaff of 27 who clean the hallway and classroom
floors every night to ensure they are sanitary andsafe for the start of the next school day.
To accomplish their nightly cleaning mission,
they had two 28-inch ride-on floor cleaningmachines. Manning the floor cleaning machines
was repetitive and time-consuming — taking
time away from other more detailed work suchas cleaning high-touch areas like bathrooms,
countertops and door handles, as well as tidying
classrooms.
Since full-time staff can be difficult to find, thebuilding and grounds department routinely reliedon substitute cleaners to provide additional
cleaning capacity. But as subs tend to come andgo, the time required to train each temporary
worker provided low return on investment.

© 2020 Tennant Company

SOLUTION
Ryan had attended a few trade shows tolearn about new solutions that could makefloor cleaning faster and easier for his timestrapped cleaning crew. He learned about thenew Tennant T7AMR robotic floor scrubber
powered by BrainOS ® advanced vision-based
artificial intelligence (AI) system.
Tennant’s flagship autonomous scrubber,the T7AMR is designed to work safely andefficiently alongside employees while theyattend to other tasks. The robotic floor
scrubber requires minimal training and haseasy-to-understand controls, which helps
operators get up to speed quickly.
“We chose Tennant’s robotic machine because
they have been a well-known brand name in
the market for years,” said Ryan. “It’s also very
simple to use and train on.”A local distributor for Tennant offered to let
Ryan use the T7AMR on a trial basis before
fully committing to robotic floor cleaning.
Seeing success in using robotics to tend to theoutside of the school, Ryan was hopeful that
autonomous cleaning could be incorporated
into his team’s daily indoor routine.
It didn’t take long for the benefits to be clear.
After programming routes, the T7AMR madepasses up and down the hallways on its
own after initial set-up by Ryan. It effectively
cleaned dirty floors, just like they’d experienced
with their manual ride-on machines. If therobotic floor cleaner came across a person orobstacle in its path, it tried to navigate aroundthe obstacle before stopping. In addition,
the simple controls eliminated the need forin-depth training — so any cleaning staff,
permanent or temporary, were able to run themachine after a quick demonstration.

After seeing how the T7AMR robotic scrubber
could alleviate time-consuming, repetitive
tasks and help improve productivity, the schooldistrict purchased the machine. The cleaningcrew still uses the ride-on machines in someinstances, but the robotic scrubber is carrying
a substantial part of the floor cleaning load
at Churchville-Chili Central School District’s
connected middle school and high schoolbuildings.
“Robotics doesn’t replace people, but it’s agood complement to help our cleaners focus on
doing more detailed work that has to be done
by a person,” said Ryan. “It saves a lot of man
hours by not having to ride on the scrubber.”
RESULTS
Since implementing the Tennant T7AMR
robotic floor scrubber, Ryan says hisdepartment saves hours of repetitive labor perweek. The robotic scrubber can typically maketwo passes up and down the length of the longhallway before it needs to be refilled. During
the course of one night’s cleaning, the crew
typically fills the robotic scrubber four times.
As an innovator in robotic technology for
the Rochester area, Churchville-Chili Central
School District continues to set the pace forother schools. Students interested in robotics
are motivated by seeing these technologies
in action inside and outside their buildings. Inturn, grounds keeping and floor cleaning has
become faster, more productive and efficient— making the workplace a more rewarding
environment.
“Very few places in Rochester are using selfdriving robots yet like these,” said Ryan. “Ourdistrict is ahead of the curve.”© 2020 Tennant Company