Situation
CleanBotix, a spinout from Clean Logix based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is on a mission to solve one of the toughest problems in the food processing industry: labor-intensive sanitation. Every night, more than 100,000 workers across the U.S. clean meat and poultry plants — a difficult, dangerous, and high-turnover job where 60–70% of time is spent simply holding a hose. CleanBotix’s vision was to automate this process with robotics, creating safer workplaces while improving food safety standards.
With two decades of industry expertise, founder Adam Jacques and his team knew the market need was enormous. Their goal was to build Rosie, a fully autonomous robot capable of rinsing, foaming, and sanitizing industrial equipment. But turning that vision into reality would require an advanced motion planning and autonomy stack — one they could not afford to build from scratch.
Problem
The challenge was daunting: cleaning environments are dynamic, wet, and highly reflective — a nightmare for sensors and navigation systems. CleanBotix’s early prototypes struggled with LIDAR reflection off stainless steel, inconsistent mapping, and software instability. The team was also juggling hardware design, field trials, and customer pilots while racing to demonstrate results ahead of a major industry expo. They needed a robust robotics software platform that could integrate navigation, arm motion, and behavior control — and a partner who could help them reach pilot deployment in under a year.
Solution
CleanBotix partnered with PickNik Robotics, leveraging MoveIt Pro, the advanced robotic application framework that helps teams go from concept to production fast. With MoveIt Pro’s high-fidelity physics engine, simulation tools, and built-in motion planning capabilities, CleanBotix was able to test, validate, and refine its robot virtually before deploying in the field. PickNik’s engineering team worked side by side with CleanBotix’s developers to:
- Integrate their robotic arm and mobile base with MoveIt Pro’s motion planning framework.
- Build a Behavior Tree–based mission system for recording and replaying cleaning trajectories.
- Create a flexible control stack compatible with both manual teaching and semi-autonomous operation.
- Overcome sensor and navigation challenges through advanced LIDAR calibration and environmental modeling.
PickNik’s collaborative engineering approach and broad robotics experience gave CleanBotix a world-class foundation — without the cost or delay of building from the ground up.
As CleanBotix CEO Adam Jacques described it, “Working with PickNik meant we didn’t have to reinvent the robotics stack. We could focus on what mattered — solving the sanitation problem — while MoveIt Pro gave us the power to move fast and iterate quickly.”
Outcome
Within 12 months, CleanBotix progressed from prototype to production-ready units. Their R6 model, powered by MoveIt Pro, demonstrated remarkable results in pilot testing:
- 80% of human cleaning speed, with fewer re-cleans and better ATP swab results.
- Four to five hours of continuous cleaning per session, with automated hose management over 40–80 ft radii.
- Reduced downtime and improved consistency, helping facilities return to production faster.
- Smooth integration of high-fidelity simulation to accelerate software testing and reduce on-site development time.
At the International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE), Rosie drew attention from major industry leaders validating both the technology and the business opportunity. CleanBotix has since begun paying pilots with large poultry processors and continues scaling production.
For CleanBotix, the results went beyond robotics. They successfully spun off from their parent company, raised new capital, and established themselves as a leader in robotic food sanitation — all in under a year.
For PickNik, it was another proof point of MoveIt Pro’s ability to accelerate time-to-market. By helping CleanBotix integrate robotics software, simulation, and autonomy rapidly, PickNik enabled the startup to deliver a sophisticated product on budget, on schedule, and with high technical capability.
MoveIt Pro is PickNik Robotics’ commercial robotics software platform that extends the capabilities of the open-source MoveIt project. Designed for unstructured environments, MoveIt Pro provides powerful tools for motion planning, grasping, perception, and behavior sequencing. With pre-built robot behaviors and a modular runtime architecture, MoveIt Pro significantly reduces engineering effort and time-to-deployment. Its hardware-agnostic design supports a wide range of commercial and custom robotic arms, making it ideal for scalable automation across space, manufacturing, and logistics sectors.
