The robot that cleans toilets so humans don’t have to – and 100 companies want one

WHEN Covid-19 emptied workplaces and grounded flights in 2020, it also hollowed out Singapore’s cleaning workforce. One of Rishab Patwari’s friends, who runs a cleaning company, suddenly found himself unable to service clients.

“His labour force was made up of two components – foreign workers and the ageing population,” says Patwari, the founder of Hivebotics, a start-up building artificial intelligence (AI)-powered autonomous robots to transform facilities management.

“The foreign workers went back to their home countries and the ageing population was scared to go to work because this was the time before Covid-19 vaccines became available. The cleaning companies were under a lot of stress because cleaning was paramount during the pandemic – but they did not have the manpower.

“That’s when my friend asked me if I could recommend some robots.”

Patwari, then a computer engineering undergraduate at the National University of Singapore (NUS), realised that while floor-cleaning robots were common, their utility was limited. Most were two-dimensional, unable to solve three-dimensional problems where an arm and interaction with the environment are necessary.

Designing from the ground up

Patwari discovered a massive gap in commercial cleaning: 60 per cent of cleaning time is spent on just 6 per cent of the floor space – the toilets. It is an essential but physically demanding, repetitive and often unpleasant task that faces a chronic labour shortage.

To address this problem, Hivebotics developed Abluo – an autonomous toilet-cleaning robot that combines steam-based disinfection, AI-driven 3D perception and robotic arms. It can operate in tight restroom environments to detect, steam and dry fixtures such as toilets, urinals and sinks without any human intervention.

By targeting this labour-intensive niche, Hivebotics engineered Abluo to ensure consistent cleaning quality in high-traffic facilities. The robot is intended to halve the time that human cleaners typically spend cleaning toilets, allowing them to focus on higher-value maintenance tasks.

To ensure the robot met industry standards, Patwari and co-founder Tuan Dung Nguyen worked directly with the world’s largest cleaning companies – and got their hands dirty, literally.

They applied for work attachments with cleaning service providers at NUS, malls and hotels in 2023. They spent days cleaning toilets and learning how to mix chemicals for the best results, to gain insights to improve Abluo’s capabilities.

The duo even concocted a mixture of miso paste, yeast and other ingredients to simulate faecal stains for the robot to scrub away.

These efforts have yielded significant results. Following onsite trials in office buildings, shopping malls and airports in Singapore, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi, the start-up received over 100 orders within a year of its commercial launch.

This commercial traction earned Hivebotics the Most Promising Start-up Award at the Emerging Enterprise Awards 2025, organised by OCBC and The Business Times.

Going beyond cleaning

Patwari says Hivebotics is not just about cleaning toilets.

“Cleaning is just one of the pillars,” he says. “Our vision is to be the autonomous facilities management provider of the world. The toilet-cleaning robot is our first entry point into this bigger vision.”

The company’s five-to-10-year vision involves entire buildings managed by a few people from a remote command centre, using an ecosystem of integrated robots.

“We may not be only building our own robots, but we will be collaborating with other robotics companies to integrate with our ecosystem. We can provide building owners with the ability to have robots that can take care of many different functions together,” he explains.

To scale manufacturing and international deployment, Hivebotics has started its Series A fundraising cycle, seeking strategic investors and partners to develop the next generation of facilities management together.

“If there are fixture makers that produce different types of fixtures in the restroom and they want to develop the new generation of facilities together, they’ll be very synergistic,” he notes.