How narrow can a hotel corridor be before a delivery robot stops working?
Body width and passage width are different numbers, and buying on the first one is the most common specification error we see. Here is how to measure a property properly, including the lift door and the carpet.
The number that matters is not the one on the datasheet
A delivery robot listed at 516 mm wide does not fit through a 600 mm gap. The datasheet figure is the body; what the machine needs is the body plus clearance on both sides for the lidar to see the wall, plus the swing of a fire door, plus the width of a housekeeping cart parked at the end of the corridor. The practical minimum for a robot of this size is about 800 mm of clear, unobstructed width.
We have been called to sites where a robot was bought on the body width alone and then spent three weeks unable to leave the service corridor. It is an expensive way to learn the difference between two numbers that look interchangeable on a quotation.
Measure these four things, not one
| What to measure | Target | Why it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Clear corridor width at the tightest point | 800 mm or more | Linen carts, ice machines and fire extinguishers all narrow the corridor in places nobody photographs |
| Lift door opening | 900 mm or more | A 800 mm door leaves no margin once the robot is not perfectly square to the frame |
| Lift car depth | 1.4 m or more | The robot has to enter, turn and still leave room for a passenger |
| Threshold and ramp height | Under 15 mm, ramp under 13° | A door bar of 20 mm stops a wheeled platform that claims a 13° climbing ability |
The lift is where most projects actually fail
Corridor width is a measurement. Lift integration is a negotiation. A robot needs one of three things to use a lift: a dry-contact signal from the lift controller, a protocol interface the lift vendor will expose, or a physical button-pressing arm. The first is cheapest, the second depends on whether your lift maintenance company is willing to sign off on it, and the third is the fallback that works everywhere but is slower and looks worse to guests.
Ask your lift maintenance contractor one question before you order anything: can they provide a dry contact that closes when the car arrives at a floor, and another that the robot can use to request a floor? If the answer is no, budget for the button-pressing arm and add roughly fifteen seconds to every trip.
Carpet, thresholds and the quiet failure modes
Deep pile carpet is a rolling resistance problem that shows up as reduced runtime rather than an outright failure, which makes it harder to diagnose. A machine rated at 12 hours on hard floor may deliver 8 on thick carpet, and the customer concludes the battery is faulty. Thresholds are the opposite: they fail loudly and immediately, usually on the first day, usually in front of the person who signed the purchase order.
If your property has both, measure the worst corridor and the worst threshold, not the average. The robot will find them.
A short checklist before you request a quotation
- Walk the route with a tape measure and note the narrowest clear width, not the widest.
- Photograph every threshold, ramp and door bar on the route.
- Measure the lift door opening and the car depth, and note the lift vendor's name.
- Count how many trips per day the robot would actually make — under about 20, a robot rarely pays back.
- Decide who empties the robot, and where, at 11 pm on a Saturday.
Send us those five answers and we will tell you which of our six platforms fits, or that none of them does. The second answer is more useful than a quotation that arrives with a corridor problem built into it.
Tell us the site. We will tell you what fits.
Send the corridor width, the lift door, the floor plan and the number of trips per day. You get a model recommendation and a written quotation within one working day — or an honest answer that a robot is not the right purchase for that route.
Ask for a quotation