A saved Whiz cleaning route includes a physical starting reference. In the Whiz operation manual, version 1.8, the Home Location Code, or HLC, establishes the machine’s home location and marks where cleaning routes start and stop. The operator scans that marker to choose the saved route to run.
The manual supports both manually taught routes and automatically created routes based on a taught perimeter. That distinction matters when a broad product description simply says to push the robot once to teach it. This explanation follows the version 1.8 manual checked on October 17, 2026; it is not an account of operating the machine. The current Japanese Whiz series page presents several different models, so these manual-specific details should stay attached to the documented Whiz configuration.
The marker selects a home and a set of routes
The manual allows six cleaning routes to be saved for one HLC. A larger cleaning area can use more than one marker, and a building with several floors needs a floor-specific HLC on each floor. This gives the operator a concrete way to select the local group of routes rather than treating the entire building as one undifferentiated cleaning job.
For example, a hypothetical floor could have separate saved routes for a frequently used corridor and a meeting area cleaned less often. Both can be associated with the same home marker while remaining separate jobs. The manual itself recommends separating areas by their cleaning frequency or floor structure to avoid unnecessarily long routes.
The HLC’s position also matters. The placement instructions say to keep it at the same location; if it must be removed, it needs to return accurately to that position. The manual warns that even a small shift can affect correct cleaning. Moving the label after repainting a wall is therefore a change to the route’s physical reference, not just a cosmetic alteration.
A marker can also become hard to read when hidden behind furniture, covered, laminated or poorly lit. These are different problems from a saved route being absent. One concerns seeing the home reference; the other concerns which job was stored under it.
Teaching a path and teaching an area produce different inputs
With manual teaching, the operator pushes the machine along the cleaning route. With automatic teaching, the operator teaches the boundary and the machine creates the cleaning route for that area. The latter is described with specific geometry conditions, not as automatic coverage of any enclosed space.
| Manual v1.8 input | What the operator supplies | Condition that changes the choice |
|---|---|---|
| Manually taught route | The cleaning path through the area | The manual directs areas with objects such as pillars to manual teaching |
| Automatically created route | One traversal of the area’s boundary | Boundary sides are limited to 10 m and 100 m; crossing paths, complex loops and pillars in the area or perimeter are excluded |
An open rectangular zone and a zone with several pillars can therefore require different teaching methods even when both are on the same floor. This is a question about the shape of the cleaning task. It is separate from the machine’s ability to detect people or obstacles while travelling.
A saved route is more than a map image
The distinction becomes clearer alongside how robot SLAM estimates position and a map. A localization system estimates where the robot is. In this documented cleaning workflow, the HLC and selected saved route tell the operator which cleaning job starts from that home. A visually plausible map does not identify which of the six stored routes the operator selected.
The manual also describes sharing routes through the Robot Operations Center. Machines assigned to the same route group can share routes when used in the same layout. That condition is useful: placing two machines in one group does not make different floor layouts interchangeable. Route sharing connects an existing task to compatible surroundings.
Choose the job before comparing its duration
The manual notes that autonomous cleaning can take longer than the teaching run. It also recommends breaking up areas when doing so reduces long travel and separates different cleaning frequencies. For a practical demonstration, compare the actual saved job and its coverage before comparing elapsed time: a daily corridor-only job and a corridor-plus-meeting-area job have different work to do.
A clear handover identifies the floor, the HLC location, the route stored under it and whether that route came from a taught path or a taught boundary. Those four details make the repeatable job understandable to the next operator without turning a marker number into a guess about the cleaning area.