accurately as hospital-grade monitoring equipment. This device could be vital for detecting the early signs of deterioration in heart patients.


Smart toilets with other health-detecting functions are already in operation in Japan: for instance, they can be used to analyse the urine of washroom visitors and test for a range of conditions such as diabetes.


Also offering a practical use are those magic mirrors used in China to allow women to virtually try on make-up. While on the face of it a gimmick, these could help to drive up profits since they enable female shoppers to use their washroom visits more constructively and try out potential purchases as they queue.


Meanwhile, Japan’s predilection for voice-activated toilets with state-of-the-art lighting is also being put to good use on a practical level. The washrooms at Tokyo’s Narita Airport are currently being upgraded in time for the 2020 Olympic Games to make them more accessible for the less abled. These facilities will feature a voice-guidance system to aid to visually-impaired people along with a light alert that will act as a signal to the deaf in cases of emergency.


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weird and wonderful feature into their facilities for these to quickly go viral. For example, the internet is filled with images and videos of high-tech washrooms with bizarre fixtures as well as intelligent cleaning robots operating in public spaces.


But when one looks past the gimmicks, there are many ways in which technology is providing real benefits and adding significant value to the cleaning and hygiene sector.


According to analysts, growth in the robot cleaning market is expected to exceed 16% in the five-year period between 2018 and 2023. This is because these machines – once considered to be a domestic novelty that was chiefly designed to impress one’s friends – are now becoming professionally viable and offering a better performance and smarter operation at ever more affordable costs.


In the home, too, cleaning robots are becoming more practical: the aforementioned Deebot Ozmo 960 launched at CES is able to pinpoint items such as socks, charging docks and cables on the floor and avoid sucking them up along with the other debris – something that even we humans struggle to do from time to time.


Intelligent toilets may well be viewed as a gimmick when they heat the seat for you and change their colour to suit your mood. But they can also provide practical, even life-saving benefits. For example, New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology came up with a cloud-connected toilet seat this February that is capable of tracking blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and other heart data as


www.tomorrowscleaning.com


And even those quirky urinal video screens are being put to a more practical purpose in some environments, rather than merely providing a fun pastime for the washroom visitor. When first introduced these were definitely designed as a quirky talking point to brighten up the washroom-user’s experience. But screens have recently been installed in the men’s urinals at the Real Madrid football stadium to ensure that washroom visitors no longer need to miss that crucial goal simply because they happen to be in the washroom at the wrong time.


At Essity we offer our own technological solution that provides practical benefits for washroom operators, maintenance staff and users alike. Tork EasyCube ‘connects’ the washroom and enables cleaning and maintenance staff to monitor visitor traffic and dispenser refill requirements remotely via a tablet or smartphone.


This data-driven cleaning saves them valuable time that would have otherwise been spent manually checking the washrooms, freeing up time for cleaning while also enhancing the user’s experience because the washrooms can be kept clean and well stocked at all times when being remotely monitored. The system is currently being used in airports, amusement parks, offices and shopping centres all over Europe.


The dictionary definition of a gimmick is ‘a trick or device intended to attract attention’. And certainly, attention- grabbing seemed to be fairly high on the list of priorities for those earlier technological innovations.


But technology has become integral to our day-to-day lives, and the cleaning sector is no exception. As we ride the next wave of innovation, we will increasingly harness technology to provide more and more practical solutions and to improve efficiency, boost health and safety and generally enhance our daily lives.


www.tork.co.uk/easycube TECHNOLOGY | 39


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