THE FIELD GUIDE
Before a floor-cleaning robot, run a site trial that counts the human work.
Compare Gausium Phantas and PUDU CC1 by floor, route, docking package, and intervention—not by a promise to replace a cleaner.
The site is part of the system
A floor-cleaning robot works within a physical environment: floor materials, narrow passages, temporary obstacles, people, storage, charging, and water arrangements. A product page can describe capabilities; it cannot show that the proposed machine fits your actual route. The first useful purchase step is a supervised site demonstration with agreed acceptance criteria.
We compare two current official product descriptions. We have not operated either machine or verified cleaning quality, navigation safety, runtime, labor savings, or local service. This guide supplies a trial framework; site risk assessment and the supplier’s operating instructions remain necessary.
What the sources describe
Gausium’s Phantas page describes sweeping, vacuuming, scrubbing, and dust mopping, with indoor mapping and optional workstation arrangements. PUDU’s CC1 page describes four floor-care modes, mapped navigation, automatic recharge, and progress resume. PUDU identifies some workstation and carpet-vacuum equipment as separate purchases.
Do not compare a fully equipped demonstration unit with a base-machine quote. Ask each supplier to identify the exact machine revision, cleaning attachments, workstation, water solution, software/service package, training, and consumables in its proposal. Similar mode names do not establish the same result on a particular floor.
Define a route with real exceptions
Choose a representative area that includes the conditions the machine will face: furniture, changing traffic, transitions, edges, and a practical place to dock. Keep the trial supervised and within the supplier’s approved operating conditions. Do not manufacture unsafe obstacles to test a safety claim.
Write down which areas are in scope and which remain manual. If a machine cannot reach an edge or work around a temporary arrangement, record that remaining work. Excluding difficult areas after the demonstration starts would make its result misleading.
A trial record staff can use
- Document the starting condition and agreed cleaning standard with the cleaning supervisor.
- Record preparation time: moving objects, filling, fitting attachments, and starting the route.
- During operation, log interruptions and the staff action needed to resume. Distinguish a planned pause from an unexpected intervention.
- Inspect the completed area, including edges and missed patches. Record any manual finishing work.
- Record return-to-dock, emptying, cleaning of the machine, charging, consumable replacement, and storage work.
Compare a whole cycle
The useful unit is the complete cleaning cycle. Elapsed machine time and staff time answer different questions, so keep both. Repeat under more than one ordinary traffic condition before drawing a conclusion. A single polished route does not support a site-wide labor-saving percentage.
Also test the support path in conversation: who handles a failed component, how quickly parts can be supplied locally, what the warranty excludes, and what training a new staff member receives. We have not verified regional availability or service response for either product. Obtain those details from the supplier responsible for your location.
Keep the person’s role explicit
Staff still manage the environment, water and consumables, inspection, exceptions, and maintenance. A machine may take over a repeatable part of a route while leaving other work unchanged. Frame the trial around that bounded task and the result staff can inspect. Decide whether the completed cycle is useful before considering a larger deployment.
Use the downloadable comparison workbook to keep observed results separate from vendor descriptions. Leave untested conditions marked as unobserved. There is no universal winner in this article because the site, package, and support arrangement materially affect the decision.
Sources & evidence
Official sources reviewed November 3, 2026. Vendor materials establish descriptions, not independently measured performance. Original evaluation criteria are our analysis.