What changed when a Cincinnati airport put one robot scrubber on 200,000 square feet a week

October 1, 2026 · 3 min read

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport doubled its passengers from 4.5 million to 9.1 million a year with 120 housekeepers scrubbing floors by hand driven machine. In November 2019 it put an Avidbots Neo to work, the first at a US airport. The vendor publishes 200,000 square feet a week in the pilot, 5 million in year one, and the airport's own 12 to 18 month payback estimate.

The short answer

A large public airport facing doubled passenger traffic put one autonomous scrubber on its terminal floors to keep them clean through the growth without adding headcount. The vendor publishes about 200,000 square feet cleaned a week during the pilot and more than 5 million square feet in the first year, with the airport's own estimate of about 30,000 dollars a year in value at eight hours a day and a 12 to 18 month payback over a five year life. The account below is the maker's own case story, so read every number as the vendor published it, not as an audited result. Disclosure: Steel Collar is an independent dealer for Avidbots.

What the job looked like before

Passenger count doubled from 4.5 million to 9.1 million a year while 120 in-house and contract housekeepers scrubbed terminal floors with hand driven machines. The airport's innovation office, which measures projects on payback, went looking in 2019 for a way to keep up without adding people, saw a Neo working at Singapore Changi in July, and put the first unit to work on November 13, 2019.

What they put in

One Avidbots Neo to start, roughly 472 kilograms, about 112 liters of water, up to 6 hours on a charge, cleaning at about 1.35 meters per second, with up to 750,000 square feet of the airport mapped for it. Nobody was let go; staff moved to supervising and maintaining the robot and to work it cannot do.

What changed, in their numbers

About 200,000 square feet cleaned per week during the pilot. More than 5 million square feet in the first year. The airport's own estimate of about 30,000 dollars a year in value at eight hours a day, a 12 to 18 month payback and a five year life. All published by the vendor.

What this does not tell you

It does not publish the machine price or the software plan cost, so the payback is the airport's estimate on its own inputs. The eight hour daily duty cycle is a fleet style assumption that most buildings cannot give one machine. And airport floors are open, hard and mapped once, the easiest case this category has; a supermarket or a hospital corridor is harder.

What to verify in your own plant

How many hours a day a robot would actually run on your floor, which drives everything. Your open hard floor square footage and how often it should be cleaned versus how often it is. The software plan, because every machine in this category runs on one. And whether your cleaning contract lets you decide what equipment runs on your floor.

Sources: https://avidbots.com/resources/customer-stories/cvg-airport-embraces-smart-robotic-floor-scrubbers-to-manage-growth/ and https://avidbots.com/news/avidbots-news-cvg-airport-becomes-first-in-u-s-to-deploy-avidbots-neo-floor-scrubbing-robots/

Describe your building and your cleaning hours to Joe, the concierge on this site. It will size the machine against your square footage, include the plan in the frame, and tell you when a walk-behind still wins.

Related on this site

The airport's payback assumed eight hours of running a day. That duty cycle, not the machine, is what made the arithmetic work, and a robot that runs two hours a night will not match it.

Put it to the test on your own job

Tell Joe what you are running and he will apply this to your numbers, including telling you when a robot is the wrong answer.

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