Every gleaming glass skyscraper tells a story of modern engineering, but behind its spotless façade lies one of the world’s most hazardous jobs. Hundreds of feet above the ground, workers continue to clean towering buildings using ropes, squeegees and sheer courage — a practice that has changed little over the years. Hyderabad-based WCB Robotics aims to rewrite that story. With ELMO, a lightweight autonomous wall-climbing robot powered by patented suction technology, the startup is aiming to make façade cleaning safer, smarter and free from the risks that have long defined the profession. CE interacts with its founder, Ujjawal Aggarwal at NxtWave of Innovation in Advanced Technologies’ TakeOver 2026, as he opens up about the idea behind WCB Robotics, challenges and more
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Can you take us through WCB Robotics?
WCB Robotics is building façade-cleaning robots for high-rise buildings. Right now buildings are cleaned by people. They hang hundreds of feet above the ground and use the same centuries-old squeegee and cleaning mop to clean the buildings. There is currently no effective replacement for it. Our solution is a very tiny robot. It’s the lightest in the world. It sticks to the glass using our patented suction technology. The patented suction technology allows the robot to stick to the glass and climb up. It has water inside and uses the same techniques that humans use to create perfectly clean glass without streaks or problems. It does all of this autonomously. You don’t have to sit there and control it. You simply feed the map of the building, and the robot goes up, does the cleaning, and comes back down.
What was the moment that made you realise this need?
The inspiration actually came from a very interesting place. My youngest sister is about 14 years younger than me, and she was asking for a car that walked on walls. That’s where it started. I made something that was a small robot-like thing that could move on walls. From there, it moved into cleaning because I got a lot of recommendations from my peers saying, ‘Wow, this can be used for cleaning.’ After some research, I realised there was a real need, and from there it evolved into making a robot that cleans buildings.
ELMO weighs around 16 kgs, compared to conventional machines that weigh nearly 500 kgs. What engineering breakthroughs made such a drastic reduction possible?
There was a lot of effort put into making it lighter. We have a carbon fibre monocoque structure that holds everything together. Everything is 3D printed. We have more than 500 unique components, but all of them are AI-optimised into organic geometries. These geometries are stiffer, lighter and can only be manufactured through 3D printing. We use the 3D printing and AI optimisation cycle to create a product where every part weighs nearly ten times less than what you would usually find in the market.
Even for components like pumps, we could have bought them from the market, but those weighed around 500 grams. Instead, we made our own, which weigh about 200 grams. Everything inside — from the gearboxes and controllers to the radio control systems — has been designed by us to be extremely lightweight. We had to make everything ourselves, but the end result is that we were able to make the robot this light.
What was the biggest technical challenge you had to overcome?
The biggest technical challenge in something like this is the sheer number of technical challenges. We have a new problem coming up every week.
One challenge was automation — how do you autonomously move a robot on a façade without using a camera? If you use a camera, everybody inside has privacy concerns. We tried around 50 different sensors, and every sensor had some downside. Eventually, we settled on our current custom IR-based sensing system, which feeds into different algorithms at different levels to figure out where the robot is on the glass and move it accordingly. Developing that algorithm was very technically challenging.
The suction cup has also been a major challenge because it needs to produce suction, lightweight, highly reliable, and work over gaps and obstacles. The list of requirements is enormous. We obviously have our patent on the design, but even that only describes the outer shell. The optimisations inside required a lot of work.
The motion systems and algorithms have also been challenging. A car has electronic stability control and an anti-lock braking system. We hear about them, but we don’t usually get to build them. We had to design electronic versions of those systems for our robot.
A car may have to climb a 30-degree hill at worst. Our robot climbs vertically, turns around on a vertical surface and then comes back down while moving sideways. All these motions are technically challenging because the orientation relative to gravity is constantly changing.
We had to design electronic stability control, an anti-lock braking system, wheel torque distribution, and grip detection systems. Rather than one single challenge, it has been the number of systems we have had to design.
If I had to pick one, the cleaning system and the suction system were particularly challenging. The cleaning system is our own design and uses water, which is tricky on a vertical surface. Our robot grips the glass, but if the glass is wet, the grip won’t be very good. Yet we are using water, so we have to ensure that 100 per cent of the water is removed before the robot moves over that section again. Making that work consistently and repeatedly has been the hardest part.
How has the unpredictable climate change strengthened the case for robotic maintenance?
Climate is obviously a big factor. If you think about places like Dubai, the people who are cleaning these buildings are working in temperatures of 52 or 53 degrees Celsius. Imagine that. First, it’s already extremely hot, and then there is a huge glass surface reflecting direct sunlight onto your face. The amount of heat they experience is unbelievable. Dehydration and similar issues are major problems for these workers.
Some people think that robotics will take away jobs. The reality is the opposite. The people doing this work today don’t want their children to follow in their footsteps. They don’t want them hanging hundreds of feet above the ground, cleaning towers in 55-degree heat while facing dangerous working conditions.
There is already a labour shortage because nobody wants to do this physically demanding and risky job. Robotics is the perfect solution for something like this.
How has the response been, especially from the government and the industry?
We have done a lot of testing and demonstrations in Hyderabad, Dubai, Kolkata, Mumbai and many other places.
The response has always been very positive because our solution is the only one that is tiny and easy to install. Its compact size allows us to travel to customer locations and give demonstrations, which no other vendor in the world can do because their robots have to be imported in large crates with customs procedures involved.
We simply put our robot in a suitcase, travel to the client’s location, and within a day we are able to give a demonstration. That has helped us a lot. People have stayed with us throughout this long development cycle. I think once we are in the market, we’ll make a splash for sure.
What’s the roadmap ahead for WCB Robotics?
We are doing more demonstrations and testing in Hyderabad. Specifically, I’d like to give a shout-out to Mantri Cosmos in Gachibowli, who have supported us a lot. We have conducted many demonstrations and tests there.
In the next two to three months, we want to finalise the product and complete the AI integration for autonomous movement on the façade. That’s very important because once the robot reaches the 10th or 14th floor, it becomes very difficult to control manually. If the AI is doing it, it’s fine. From here, I can barely see the robot, let alone control it.
Once that is completed in about two months, we’ll launch the robot first in India and then in Dubai and across the world.
We are also raising funds, but we haven’t exactly started the fundraising process. We think we’ll begin once the robot is launched and hopefully raise our Series A by the end of the year.