High Rise of the Machines

New York’s legion of window washers have long fascinated city dwellers below with their fearlessness. But the future of the profession might belong to those even more impervious to dangerous heights: robots.

Clearing a path to the market soon will be the Winbot 7, a compact machine billed by manufacturer Ecovacs Robotics as the first full-service window-washing robot. The device, which resembles a Roomba vacuum cleaner, attaches itself to the pane, maps out its perimeter and proceeds to clean the surface, playing a tinny tune when the work is completed.

Nick Savadian, executive general manager of the company’s U.S. arm, said the robot is aimed at busy homeowners looking for a labor-saving escape from boring chores. “One thing we’re short of in life is time,” he said.

Mr. Savadian allowed that his company’s small robots could have potential applications some day on gleaming skyscrapers, where window work carries risks. “Winbot is very proud to put itself in that position,” he said. “It will clean the outside without taking any chances of liability.”

But the prospect of a near future in which scaffold-riding professionals are replaced by automatons doesn’t appeal to everyone — particularly window washers and the New Yorkers who romanticize them.

“Technology is nice — phones and everything — but for window cleaning, I can’t see it,” said William Coffey, who works for Manhattan-based Skyway Window Cleaning and has been in the industry for three decades.

Mr. Coffey has worked alongside cleaning machines at times but said his most important jobs, including the glass observation deck at the Twin Towers, have always been done by human hands.

“We’re jumping, we’re going on a scaffold, we’re getting pushed out [by wind], you know, we’re going down the side of a building,” he added. “I can’t see a robot thinking of all the things that have to be done.”

The total number of high-rise window washers in and around the city isn’t clear. The window-cleaning division of Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, one of the largest unions, counts 800 members.

Andrew Horton, who coordinates safety training for the union’s apprentice window washers, said graduates of the nearly two-year-long program can expect to earn roughly $27 an hour plus $18-a-day fee for working on a scaffold; experienced window cleaners can earn up to $60,000 a year.

In a city defined in no small measure by its towering architecture, Brooklyn Public Library archivist Ivy Marvel believes there is “civic pride” in knowing that window cleaners exist. “It humanizes the city,” she said. “We take a lot of pride in people that do those jobs that only exist in a city like this.”

The city’s sense of window-washing heroism is likely as old as its skyscrapers. Ms. Marvel recently came across a 1952 Brooklyn Daily Eagle profile of Ed Kemp, a window cleaner she describes as fighting a “grimly noble struggle against ambient dirt and pigeon dung.”

Ms. Marvel said she wouldn’t be surprised if she stared up one day and saw machines doing the work. While the Winbot 7 tries to win over homeowners, other companies are already aiming to automate window-washing work for the world’s futuristic mega-towers.

Even with advances in robotics, Mr. Riddell believes the idiosyncratic corners, buttresses and recesses of New York’s 20th century skyline will keep humans involved in the trade. “In some cases you could see a machine has benefit but in most cases it’ll be old elbow grease and ingenuity,” he said.

At J. Racenstein, which has offices in Secaucus, N.J., the most high-tech option available is the HighRise Window Cleaning System, which costs up to $50,000 and promises to reduce labor costs by 50%. The machines are operated by technicians and built to fit into existing rigging used by human cleaners.