Pudu BellaBot vs Keenon C30: A Waiter Robot Versus a Cleaning Robot

These are two devices with entirely different purposes. The BellaBot is 129 cm tall, weighs 55 kg, carries up to 40 kg of food and drink on four trays, moves at up to 1.2 m/s and runs up to 12 hours. It finds its way by LiDAR and an RGB-D camera. The C30 is 75 cm tall, 35 kg in mass, with a speed of up to 0.8 m/s, runs up to 6 hours on its battery and navigates with three stereo vision cameras. It sweeps, vacuums and mops the floor at once, so it replaces three jobs with one pass. The C30 has no payload in the sense of carrying cargo, because it is not meant for transport.

The difference in runtime has practical meaning. Cleaning a large hall is done in sessions, so 6 hours suffices for a typical cycle; service in a dining room lasts a whole shift, hence the BellaBot's 12 hours. Both robots use similar classes of sensors, and the market of their suppliers is described in our components overview: laser scanners are made by firms such as SICK and Hokuyo, depth and stereo cameras by, for example, Intel RealSense. For a reader just getting to know these robots, general background is given in “Service Robots in Restaurants and Hotels”, and commercial cleaning is covered in “Commercial Cleaning Robots in Practice”. Among Pudu's cleaning offer there is also the Pudu CC1, and a waiter counterpart with a smaller payload is the Pudu KettyBot Pro.

The billing models here are entirely different. The BellaBot costs 14,500 USD to buy in the US, about 56,200 zloty at 3.8762, or 409 USD a month on a 36-month subscription; Polish sellers quote prices on request, and the trade press estimates it at 45–70 thousand zloty net, which is not a manufacturer price list. The C30 is available in Poland for rent: according to NetVet.pl 2,390 zloty net a month on a 12-month contract or 3,990 zloty net a month without commitment, plus 200 zloty a month for consumables. Rental periods of 1, 12, 24 and 48 months are available. No purchase price for the C30 is given.

Be careful with a month-to-month comparison. The BellaBot subscription of 409 USD is about 1,590 zloty, but in dollars, before tax and for the American market; renting the C30 with consumables is 2,590 zloty net a month in Poland. These are different currencies, markets and scopes of service, so the comparison serves only as an order of magnitude. Both robots are available in Poland: the BellaBot through sebotics.com, sas24.pl, rkserwis.com, gastrozona.pl and machinesforyou.pl, the C30 through netvet.pl.

The BellaBot handles serving of food and drink and the collection of crockery in a restaurant and hotels. Where waiters lose time on long routes from kitchen to dining room, it brings the greatest saving. The C30 cleans surfaces in offices, hotels, shops and airports, that is, wherever there is a large area of even floor. In retail — in a shopping mall or a supermarket — it relieves the cleaning crew during hours when traffic is low.

The choice between them depends solely on the task: service versus keeping things clean. A hotel with both a breakfast room and large lobbies may one day need both, but the first deployment is worth limiting to one, with the effect measured. When assessing such a deployment, remember privacy, since the robots carry cameras: see “Data Security: Robots with Cameras and the GDPR”. The category is described in “Service robots”.