Site Assessment Before a Robot Lease Quote: The Steps

What happens between the first call and the fixed quote?

A robot lease quote is only as reliable as the walk that came before it. Between the first call and a fixed monthly payment, a site assessment checks the floors, routes, doorways, lifts, power, Wi-Fi and restricted areas a robot will use, then turns those findings into a written scope. Skipping that step is the surest way to get a quote that reads well on paper and fails on the first night shift.

In practice the sequence runs through an intake conversation, a document request, an on site survey, mapping and configuration, and a written scope that the quote is built from. Timing varies with the building. One UK integrator, Fresh Mango, describes its on site survey as 1 to 2 hours, followed by floor mapping and configuration of 2 to 6 hours. Ask any provider which phase its timeline covers, because some count the survey and the mapping separately.

What does the walk actually measure?

The survey follows every route the robot would take, not only the open room where the demo happened. Fresh Mango's published survey guide lists floor surfaces, corridor and doorway widths, turning areas, ramps, thresholds, lifts, Wi-Fi along operating routes, and restricted or fire exit zones.

Flatness is where assumptions break. A Global Supply Chain Briefing guide argues that level and flatness are not interchangeable, and that the tolerance depends on wheel, suspension, load and speed. Surveyors should check expansion joints, drainage grates and elevator sills, and measure slopes under the loaded configuration. A RoboticsCenter checklist offers a flatness threshold of under 3 mm variation over 1 m for mobile platforms, though that figure comes from a vendor blog rather than a standard.

How much of the floor is actually usable?

Gross square footage is the wrong number for a quote. Robotechpros, in its comparison table, describes AMR aisle widths of 2 m or wider as working well, and treats aisles below 1.5 m or congested aisles as a reason for caution. Those figures describe autonomous mobile robots more broadly, but the same logic applies to floor scrubbers that need clear lanes.

The practical tradeoff is coverage versus clearance. A route that narrows to a pinch point may force a shorter loop, a second unit, or a manual pass at that spot. The survey should record where those pinch points sit, so the quote prices the open route and not the drawing.

How do mapping and dock positions get settled?

Mapping is the part of the process most people picture, and it is often the shortest. Gausium's published deployment guide says candidate dock positions should be marked on the floor plan during the survey and cleared with fire safety and circulation owners, because the spots chosen on delivery day are usually the ones already ruled out. The same guide says the existing plumbing often decides where a workstation can go.

Gausium also reports that a 3,000 square meter supermarket can go from zero to running in about 20 minutes with its mapping process. That is a vendor claim about one deployment type, so treat it as a best case rather than a planning figure. Sites that settle dock positions in the survey can run a first task the same day, while others stop to resolve power or drainage.

Why do power and Wi-Fi get their own checks?

Power is the operator input most often underestimated. A RoboticsCenter checklist describes a dedicated 15 amp circuit within 3 m of the robot base, an Ethernet drop within 5 m, and Wi-Fi stronger than minus 50 dBm at the robot position. Those are vendor-blog figures, not an industry standard, so confirm them against the specific model's requirements before the scope is written.

Wi-Fi needs a wireless survey, not a phone check. Global Supply Chain Briefing says that seeing bars on a phone beside a route is not a wireless assessment, and that a useful survey follows the mission at the device's antenna height during representative operation. The scope should cover coverage, interference, roaming, retries, packet loss and latency variation. Fresh Mango notes that its robots need reasonable Wi-Fi mainly for remote monitoring, software updates and fleet reporting, while navigation runs on onboard sensors. A dead zone therefore costs visibility before it costs motion, and the quote should say which functions depend on the network.

What should you gather before the survey?

Orion Star advises documenting zones, floor types, service windows, traffic patterns, water access and waste water handling before a quote is prepared. The items below are the ones a survey team will ask for early, and most of them are cheaper to collect in advance than to reconstruct on site.

• Photos and short video of each route, taken at roughly the height a robot's sensors would see it
• The shift schedule and the cleaning or transport windows the robot is allowed to use
• Floor type by zone, plus debris samples from the worst areas and a note of any epoxy, sealed or polished surfaces
• Water supply points and wastewater handling, if wet cleaning is in scope
• Operating restrictions such as areas closed for food safety, patient care or secure storage
• The staff who share each corridor, and the team that will receive and supervise the robot

How does the survey become a fixed monthly quote?

A survey produces a written scope, and the quote should follow from it. Fresh Mango's deployment guide describes the scope as covering what the robot will do, what the operator must provide, and any building works needed before install. It says the operator typically provides power and Wi-Fi coverage. Lift controllers, plumbing for auto refill docks and warehouse system integration are handled during install, but they still need to appear in the scope so they are priced.

This is where we connect the assessment to the lease. Service Robot Co. is a full service commercial robot integrator for US businesses, and we are OEM neutral. We pick the right robots across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service every unit through a nationwide US engineer network. We lease robots only, through financing on a 3 year lease, with one fixed payment quoted after the site assessment. That fixed payment is only as stable as the scope behind it, so the survey is where we confirm the floor, the routes, the power and the network before a number is put on paper.

Orion Star's advice to define the operating envelope first is worth following. Start with the work the robot must finish, the hours it must finish it in, and the areas it must avoid. The monthly figure comes after those are fixed, not before.

What should you check before you sign?

Read the scope as a list of promises. Each item on the survey should map to a line in the quote, whether that line says the operator provides it, the integrator provides it, or it is excluded. Gaps between those columns are where unexpected costs and delays tend to appear after a 36 month lease starts.

Ask also how route changes are handled after install. Fresh Mango says its routes can be edited in software, which helps with small layout shifts. Larger changes, such as a new wall or a relocated dock, should be written into the scope before they happen. Most figures in this article come from vendor publications, so treat them as starting points that your own walk must confirm.