The short answer
A UAE airport can put robots to work in five places: scrubbing check-in halls, concourses and gate areas (the Gausium Scrubber 75P, from about $95,880, or the Avidbots Neo 2, from about $72,000), cleaning carpeted lounges and holdrooms (the Gausium Vacuum 40, from about $21,800), guiding passengers (the LG CLOi GuideBot, from about $39,990, which speaks Arabic), sweeping forecourts, drop-off lanes and car parks (the Pudu MT1, from about $46,000) and patrolling landside car parks, offices and back-of-house areas (an indoor patrol robot from about $52,000, or the Ascento Guard outdoors from about $78,000). These are HORMĒ's indicative prices in US dollars before VAT, installation and integration. Running each machine under the HORMĒ behavior platform adds a licence from $149 per machine per month, and most operators start with a paid 90-day pilot in one landside zone.
Why airports are a natural fit for robots
Three things set airports apart. The first is scale: terminals are among the largest continuous hard floors anywhere, and they are open around the clock, so there is no overnight window in which the whole floor is empty. Cleaning has to happen zone by zone between flight banks, which is exactly the kind of repetitive, scheduled work that autonomous machines handle well. The second is traffic. Dubai International welcomed 95.2 million guests in 2025, 3.1% more than in 2024, which Dubai Airports described as the highest annual international passenger traffic ever recorded by any airport. The third is growth: in April 2024 Dubai approved an AED 128 billion passenger terminal at Al Maktoum International, designed for up to 260 million passengers a year, with operations to move from Dubai International over the coming years.
Passengers in UAE airports also come from everywhere, so wayfinding has to work in many languages, and every hour of the day has a different peak. That makes airports a demanding but well-defined setting: clear zones, known schedules and measurable results per square metre or per passenger.
Five jobs robots do in an airport
1. Check-in halls, concourses and gate areas
Large-format scrubber-dryers are the core of any airport robot programme. The Gausium Scrubber 75P is an industrial scrubber-dryer built for airports, malls and large terminals; it is rated at about 3,000 m² an hour, and its docking station fills and drains water automatically, removing the manual water stop that otherwise interrupts every shift. The Avidbots Neo 2 is a large-format scrubber rated at about 3,900 m² an hour with LiDAR and vision navigation; HORMĒ's catalogue notes it has been deployed by seven of the world's top ten airports by Skytrax ranking. As rough arithmetic only: a machine at its rated 3,000 m² an hour working a five-hour quiet period would cover up to 15,000 m²; real coverage is lower once crowds, turns, water changes and charging are counted. For corridors, piers and washroom approaches, the mid-size Scrubber 50 (from about $34,500, 1,800 m² an hour) is easier to manoeuvre. For every floor-care machine HORMĒ lists, see commercial cleaning robots in the UAE.
2. Lounges and holdrooms
Lounges, prayer rooms and many gate holdrooms are carpeted or mixed. The Gausium Vacuum 40 combines vacuuming, sweeping and dust-mopping, detects the floor type automatically and uses H13 HEPA filtration, so it can move between carpet and hard floor without a change of machine. In lounge dining areas, tray robots such as the Pudu BellaBot (from about $15,900) can run plates and bus tables; see delivery and service robots in the UAE.
3. Wayfinding for passengers
The questions are always the same: where is my gate, where is the transfer desk, where is the prayer room, how far is it to the taxi rank. The LG CLOi GuideBot is a wayfinding and concierge robot for lobbies and terminals; it answers on a dual touchscreen and by voice in several languages, including Arabic, and runs for about 10 hours. Placed at arrivals exits, transfer areas and check-in halls, it takes routine questions away from information desks at peak times. The compact Pudu KettyBot (from about $8,900) suits greeting and mobile signage for retail and food-and-beverage tenants.
4. Forecourts, drop-off lanes and car parks
Sand and dust arrive with every car, taxi and coach. Indoor scrubbers are not built for that; the Pudu MT1 is a semi-outdoor sweeper for dust, sand and large debris, with 3D perception, rated for areas of up to 100,000 m² and designed to run around the clock, which suits covered forecourts and multi-storey car parks.
5. Landside patrol
An indoor patrol robot can walk car-park levels, office floors and back-of-house corridors on a set route, riding the lifts between floors. The patrol robot in HORMĒ's catalogue uses thermal and visual sensors and routes anything unusual to a human operator to verify before an alert reaches the security team. For open-air car parks and landside perimeters, the Ascento Guard is a two-wheeled, all-weather outdoor patrol robot proven on sites of 40,000 m². Robots support the airport's security team; they do not replace screening or the airport's own security procedures. See security and patrol robots in the UAE.
Machines HORMĒ lists for airports
| Job | Machine | Maker | Indicative price | Lead time | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Check-in halls and concourses | Scrubber 75P | Gausium (CN) | From $95,880 | 12–16 weeks | Industrial scrubber-dryer for airports and large terminals; 3,000 m²/hr, auto fill and drain docking |
| Very large floors | Neo 2 | Avidbots (CA) | From $72,000 | 14–20 weeks | Large-format autonomous scrubber; 3,900 m²/hr, LiDAR and vision navigation |
| Piers and corridors | Scrubber 50 | Gausium (CN) | From $34,500 | 10–14 weeks | Mid-size scrubber; 1,800 m²/hr, 3D LiDAR, 4–6 hours |
| Lounges and holdrooms | Vacuum 40 | Gausium (CN) | From $21,800 | 10–14 weeks | Vacuum, sweep and dust-mop for carpet and hard floors; H13 HEPA, automatic floor-type detection |
| Lounge dining | BellaBot | Pudu Robotics (CN) | From $15,900 | 10–14 weeks | Four-tray delivery robot; 40 kg payload, 12 hours |
| Wayfinding | CLOi GuideBot | LG Electronics (KR) | From $39,990 | 12–16 weeks | Multilingual wayfinding for lobbies and terminals, including Arabic; dual touchscreen, 10 hours |
| Forecourts and car parks | MT1 outdoor sweeper | Pudu Robotics (CN) | From $46,000 | 12–16 weeks | Semi-outdoor sweeping of dust, sand and large debris; up to 100,000 m², 24/7 |
| Indoor patrol | Indoor patrol robot | Cobalt Robotics (US) | From $52,000 | 14–18 weeks | Multi-floor patrol that rides the lift, with thermal and visual sensors and human verification of alerts |
| Outdoor car parks | Ascento Guard | Ascento (CH) | From $78,000 | 16–22 weeks | All-weather two-wheeled outdoor patrol robot; handles kerbs, proven on 40,000 m² sites |
Indicative list prices in US dollars, excluding VAT, installation and integration, subject to confirmation. Treat them as budgetary ceilings: volume orders price below these figures. For prices side by side, see how much a commercial cleaning robot costs in the UAE and how much a security robot costs in the UAE.
An illustrative starter fleet
A first terminal zone usually needs floor care first and passenger help second. Using the list prices above, two Scrubber 75P machines for a check-in hall and its concourse ($191,760), one Vacuum 40 for a lounge ($21,800) and one CLOi GuideBot at the arrivals exit ($39,990) come to about $253,550 in hardware, before VAT, installation and integration. Under the HORMĒ Core licence, intended for service and cleaning machines on known routes, the four machines add $596 a month ($149 each). Adding one MT1 sweeper for the forecourt ($46,000) brings the hardware to about $299,550 and the licence to $745 a month. This is an arithmetic example from list prices, not a quotation; a site survey fixes the real numbers.
Leasing is cheaper to start but dearer to hold: on HORMĒ's whole-site cost modelling, leasing and buying cross over at around month twenty, so buying usually costs less for machines that will stay longer than that.
Making several robots work as one team
An airport rarely buys all its robots from one maker. Scrubbers from one vendor, a guide robot from a second and patrol robots from a third each arrive with their own app, map and schedule, and all of them compete for the same lifts, service corridors and quiet periods. HORMĒ's Behavioral Intelligence layer sits above the vendors' own systems, so the machines share one map of the terminal, one set of rules and one operator, and tasks are assigned against what is happening rather than a fixed timetable.
In an airport, the useful rules follow the flight schedule. Typical policies include sending scrubbers to a gate area once its flight has boarded, keeping machines out of check-in zones during a departure bank, holding robots clear of emergency exits, escalator landings and moving walkways, slowing every robot near arrivals exits at peak, and moving a guide robot to a transfer desk when a delayed flight lands. Getting robots from different vendors through shared lifts and doors is the problem the open-source framework Open-RMF addresses; see robot fleet management across vendors for how this compares with single-vendor fleet software.
How to start: a 90-day pilot
- Start landside. A check-in hall, a car-park structure or an office building avoids most airside access issues while the programme proves itself.
- Pick one zone and one measure. Square metres cleaned per shift, cleaning hours freed for other tasks, or passenger questions answered at a busy exit.
- Bring the right people in early. Terminal operations, the cleaning contractor, airport security, IT and the commercial team each own part of the decision; agree who can change routes and schedules.
- Survey the site. Floor finishes, expansion joints and ramps, lift and door controls, Wi-Fi coverage, charging and water points, and how passenger flows change across the day.
- Check approvals before shipment. Any robot with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or cellular modules needs TDRA type approval before it is used in the UAE, and airside work needs the airport operator's own approvals; see robot import approvals in the UAE.
- Plan lead times. The machines in the table above take about 10 to 22 weeks to reach a UAE site, so order well ahead of the peak travel season.
- Run, measure, decide. A paid 90-day pilot shows what the machines actually do in your terminal. The fleet order follows the results.
Safety in public areas
A terminal is a public space, so the safety case is different from a warehouse. The ISO 3691-4 standard for driverless industrial trucks excludes vehicles operating in public zones and points to ISO 13482, the safety standard for personal care robots, for those settings; robots in check-in halls and concourses are assessed against the standards that fit the robot and the site. Behavior policies such as exclusion zones and reduced speed sit on top of each machine's own safety functions and do not replace them. See ISO 3691-4 explained for the industrial side.
How HORMĒ fits in
HORMĒ is a Behavioral Intelligence platform for autonomous machines, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, that also supplies the machines. For airports it supplies cleaning, guide, service and patrol robots across the UAE and GCC, handles the approvals before shipment, holds spares in the UAE and puts every machine under one behavior layer, licensed per machine per month. For other public buildings, see the companion guides to robots for malls and retail, robots for hotels and robots for hospitals in the UAE, and robots for offices and facilities management.
Machine categories
Terminals, lounges, car parks Delivery and service robots
Guide and lounge robots Security and patrol robots
Indoor and outdoor patrol Platform pricing
Per machine, per month
Frequently asked questions
What robots can airports in the UAE use?
Airports mainly use five kinds of robot: large autonomous scrubber-dryers for check-in halls, concourses and gate areas; vacuum and dust-mop robots for carpeted lounges and holdrooms; multilingual guide robots for wayfinding; semi-outdoor sweepers for forecourts, drop-off lanes and car parks; and patrol robots for landside car parks, offices and back-of-house areas. HORMĒ lists machines from Gausium, Avidbots, Pudu Robotics, LG Electronics, Cobalt Robotics and Ascento for these jobs.
How much does an airport floor-cleaning robot cost in the UAE?
On HORMĒ's indicative list, a large terminal scrubber costs from about $72,000 (Avidbots Neo 2, rated at about 3,900 m² an hour) to about $95,880 (Gausium Scrubber 75P, about 3,000 m² an hour with automatic fill and drain docking). Prices are in US dollars before VAT, installation and integration, and the HORMĒ Core licence adds $149 per machine per month.
Is there a robot that gives directions to passengers in Arabic?
Yes. The LG CLOi GuideBot, listed by HORMĒ from about $39,990, is a wayfinding and concierge robot for lobbies and terminals. It answers on a dual touchscreen and by voice in several languages including Arabic and runs for about 10 hours.
Can robots work airside at a UAE airport?
Only with the airport operator's agreement. Airside areas are security-restricted, so any robot working there needs the operator's approval, airside access arrangements and screening of the machine and its maintenance staff, on top of the usual TDRA type approval for its radio modules. Most programmes start landside, in check-in halls, forecourts, car parks and offices, where those conditions are simpler.
How big is the opportunity for robots at UAE airports?
Floor area and traffic are large and growing. Dubai International welcomed 95.2 million guests in 2025, 3.1% more than in 2024, according to Dubai Airports, and Dubai approved an AED 128 billion passenger terminal at Al Maktoum International in April 2024 designed for up to 260 million passengers a year. Cleaning, guidance and patrol all scale with that floor area and footfall.
How can robots from different makers work together in one terminal?
Each manufacturer ships its own app, map and schedule. HORMĒ is a behavior layer that sits above them, so scrubbers, guide robots and patrol robots from different vendors share one map of the terminal, one set of rules and one operator, and are coordinated around flight banks, gate changes, lifts and busy check-in zones.
Prices are indicative, in US dollars, and exclude VAT, installation and integration. They are compiled from published distributor pricing current to 2026 and are confirmed by quotation once the site and use case are known. Manufacturer names are used to identify equipment HORMĒ lists; trade marks belong to their owners. External sources: Dubai Media Office, "DXB sets new global benchmark as record traffic volumes become the norm" (February 2026); Al Jazeera, "Dubai announces $35bn construction of world's largest airport terminal" (April 2024). Checked 2026-10-18.
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