Rethinking retail with robots at Lowe’s

An innovative experiment in customer service involving robots is underway at a Lowe’s Orchard Supply Hardware store in Silicon Valley.



The home improvement retailer has introduced two robots called OSHbots to the aisles of the Orchard Supply store in San Jose, Calif., to help with basic customer service functions such as locating products, assessing inventory levels or sharing information about promotions. The OSHbots can recognize multiple languages and can also connect shoppers with employees at other stores for specific questions requiring a high level of expertise. Orchard operates 71 stores in California and Oregon that average about 36,000-sq.-ft.



"Using science fiction prototyping, we explored solutions to improve customer experiences by helping customers quickly find the products and information they came in looking for," said Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe's Innovation Labs. "As a result we developed autonomous retail service robot technology to be an intuitive tool customers can use to ask for help, in their preferred language, and expect a consistent experience."



For store employees, OSHbot will provide an additional layer of support by helping customers with simple questions, enabling more time for them to focus on delivering project expertise, according to Lowe’s. For example, the OSHbot incorporates scanning technology first developed for the Lowe's Holoroom home improvement simulator. A customer may bring in a spare part and scan the object using OSHbot's 3D sensing camera. After scanning and identifying the object, OSHbot will provide product information to the customer and help guide them to its location on store shelves.



The OSHbot was developed through a partnership between Lowe's Innovation Labs and Fellow Robots, a Silicon Valley technology company specializing in the design and development of autonomous service robots. The partnership was initiated through SU Labs, a Singularity University program that connects corporate innovation teams with startups and other organizations to explore exponentially accelerating technologies and create new sustainable business solutions.



"The last decade was one of rapid technological advancement and prototyping, especially in robotics," said Marco Mascorro, CEO of Fellow Robots. "With OSHbot, we've worked closely with Lowe's Innovation Labs to take autonomous retail service robot technology out of the sandbox and into the consumer market – enhancing the in-store consumer experience and creating smarter shoppers."