Development of a restroom cleaning system for convenience stores

Abstract

Toilet cleaning is an unhygienic task, and automation of this task is required, particularly in convenience stores. In this study, we propose a toilet cleaning system consisting of a toilet bowl for reducing urine scattering, a toilet bowl top cleaning mechanism, a toilet bowl lifting mechanism, and a toilet floor cleaning robot. The toilet bowl of the proposed system is a combination of the shapes of a typical toilet bowl and a urinal. It effectively reduces splashing when a human urinates in a standing position. At the beginning, the toilet bowl lifting mechanism lifts the toilet bowl to prevent the restroom contamination in advance, and the toilet bowl top cleaning mechanism and floor cleaning robot clean the toilet bowl and floor surface, respectively. The effectiveness of the proposed system was verified in ten experiments using simulated urine and garbage (three pieces of toilet paper, one toilet paper core, and one paper cup). The system was able to collect garbage in all experiments. Each cleaning task required approximately 17 s, and the average removal rate of simulated urine was 97.8%.