ROBOT OF THE WEEK: THE STORE ASSISTANT DROID
by Hazed
Visit the hardware store Lowe’s in San Jose and you may not get served by a human. The store now has a new droid to assist customers. It can speak English and Spanish, it recognises any part, and it knows the store’s inventory on a second-by-second basis.
OSHbot is about 5 foot tall and it has a 3D scanner and a touchscreen on its body. The scanner connects to a database of thousands of small screws, hinges and other parts, so that when a customer comes into the store with a widget they don’t know the name of, the droid can identify it.
Right now there are two robots in operation, and variations are being field tested. The store is experimenting with different voices – male or female, electronic or human – whether the robots should have a face or not, and how fast they move.
Well, it sounds like OSHbot is going to be of much more use to customers than the average employee at hardware stores in the UK!
