A Robot to fight Covid-19
San Francisco, CA | 2020
Archie is a blockchain enabled robot conceived to sanitize hotels rooms via UV: Robots are much more than IoT devices on wheels, and managing the diverse and geographically distributed team that made Archie was an important milestone for me.
I hired MEG, the Augmented Photobiology team based in Milan, to explore the science behind Archie -and- I hired a remote robotic team based in L.A. and Texas to design the mechanical part and the navigation engine.
The customer, AVID Technology, was established in Chicago. DGI's team involved in this project was based in Milan, NYC, and Silicon Valley. This robot its pretty tall and technically complex; DGI's role was make the robot visually and culturally acceptable.
Highlights
We have chosen a specific approach to classify robots and find our sweet spot.
When the robot is taller than many users -kids included- it's fundamental to explore the cultural and visual acceptability.
Archie is not for sale: it's a rent model. The hotel manager's software platform it's an Uber-style dashboard, beneficial to rent the robot, plan their duty, and double-check the smart-contracts automatic payments.
Competitors were mostly positioning their equipments as NOT-autonomous and dedicated mostly to healthcare facilities. They can't easily scale in the hospitality field.
Sanitization is confirmed directly to the hotels' guests, and it's guaranteed by AVID and the blockchain technology (not by the hotel)
Archie Service operation model (high level)