A Development of a Toilet Bowl with the Side Surface Cleaning Mechanism for Retail Stores

Abstract

Automation of toilet cleaning has been demanded at convenience stores. In this paper, we developed a toilet bowl that is easy to clean with the machine and has a cleaning mechanism to clean the side surface of the toilet bowl. The shape of the toilet bowl is cylindrical so that the cleaning mechanism can clean its side surface easily. The cleaning mechanism is installed behind the toilet bowl, and has a columnar microfiber cloth as a cleaning tool. The cleaning mechanism moves along the side surface of the toilet bowl and wipes urine with the rotating cleaning tool. First, we investigated the tendency of urine stains in the proposed toilet bowl using a simulated urine discharge machine. The result showed that the tendency was similar to that of a standard toilet bowl, but less urinary dripping on its side surface. The experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the cleaning mechanism. The results confirmed that the cleaning mechanism achieved an average removal rate of 91.5% by cleaning the simulated urine for 20 seconds. Moreover, it was able to clean the simulated urine at removal rate over 95% repeatedly by washing and dehydrating the cleaning tool after each cleaning. Finally, the prospect of a cleaning effect on assumed urine dripping was investigated using the simulated urine discharge machine. The results confirmed that the urine dripping can be cleaned with a high removal rate of 88.3% on average.