Cleaning Robots in Public Spaces: A Survey and Proposal for Benchmarking Based on Stakeholders Interviews

Abstract: Autonomous cleaning robots for public spaces have potential for addressing current societal challenges, such as labor shortages and cleanliness in public spaces. Other application domains like autonomous driving, bin picking, or search and rescue have shown that benchmarking platforms and approaches in competitive settings can advance their respective research fields, resulting in more applicable systems under real-world conditions. For this paper, we analyzed seven semi-structured, qualitative stakeholder interviews about outdoor cleaning, identified current needs as well as limitations, and considered those results for the development of a benchmarking scenario based on the previous observations.