Shopping complex owner Vicinity Centres has been trialling a robot to clean its floors but it says there are no plans to replace, but rather complement, its human contract cleaners.

An autonomous cleaning machine called the Cleanfix RA 660 Navi has been scrubbing and vacuuming the floors of Vicinity’s DFO Homebush centre in Sydney in the past six weeks.

Simone Carroll, Vicinity’s executive general manager of digital and people, said the robot, which has a 360-degree view thanks to 11 sensors, has been cleaning at the DFO at night when there are no shoppers around.

Carroll said the company was not getting into the cleaning business and the trial was about looking at how robots can complement humans rather than replace them.

“This is about large surface areas which are difficult for humans to cover at night,” Carroll told AAP.

“Robots are focused on large surfaces. We can run it constantly at night time and really improve the overall standard of cleanliness.

“When it comes to the finer details, the tabletops, the corners, crevices and overall management of the centres, that is where we need people.”

Demonstrations of Cleanfix’s automated scrubbers have also been held during the trial for cleaning companies that have contracts with Vicinity.

Carroll would not comment on whether any of the companies support and will start to use robots but she admitted that if they were to adopt the technology, any cost savings would benefit Vicinity.

“Any redeployment that may happen in the cleaning company is potentially a saving that would, yes, be passed on to us which we could put into improved consumer and customer experience,” she said.

“I suspect, as we have seen with technology, that it will create opportunities for cleaning companies to add additional products to their mix.”

Vicinity, which owns and operates about 85 retail assets across Australia, is planning a second trial of another smart cleaning technology.

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