LoweBot and OSHbot: Lowe's guide robot that went from a one-store test to a planned 11 Bay Area stores

Two robots and a one-store test in San Jose in 2014

On 28 October 2014 Lowe's Innovation Labs announced that it would introduce two autonomous retail service robots for the holiday season. They were called OSHbot and were placed in the midtown San Jose store of Orchard Supply Hardware, a Lowe's subsidiary. Fellow Robots co-developed them. OSHbot directs customers to products and gives real-time promotion and inventory information. With a 3D sensing camera, a customer can scan an object such as a spare part to get product details and its shelf location. It could also connect to experts at other locations. Multilingual conversation was planned for later.

After a two-year test, a plan for 11 Bay Area stores

Knowledge at Wharton wrote that LoweBot followed a two-year pilot at an Orchard Supply Hardware store. On 30 August 2016 Lowe's announced LoweBot for 11 stores in the San Francisco Bay Area over seven months, starting in San Jose. According to Computerworld, LoweBot is five feet tall, has screens on the front and back, scans inventory and uses voice recognition. The company’s account was that it answers simple questions and collects inventory data so employees can spend time on project help. We did not find material on its operation after this announcement.

Customers amused, and a reporter who distrusts the video

In December 2014 ABC7 summed up customer reaction as enjoying the novelty as long as it does not go too far. It also said OSHbot is not meant to replace humans. IEEE Spectrum’s Evan Ackerman wrote that he has an inherent distrust of videos like these and questioned how fast it recognizes parts and whether it can handle crowded holiday aisles. He called the real world “extraordinarily difficult for autonomous robots to handle.” In 2016 Wharton printed no direct shopper reactions, only expert views. Professor Marshall Fisher argued that inventory accuracy matters more than labor savings because empty shelves are a major retail problem.

A robot whose record stops after the 2016 announcement

OSHbot was presented with both guidance and inventory information, and LoweBot as a robot that helps find products and scans inventory to collect data. There is an announcement of a test, but after the expansion the public record stops. Our Bossa Nova record follows a robot that circled partner stores several times a day until a reported contract end. We found no such report for LoweBot. So this record shows the design at the time of announcement, not the results.

Should a guide robot prove its worth in the store through directions or through inventory scanning?

What we haven’t confirmed

• How many stores actually ran LoweBot after 2016, for how long, and when and why it ended
• How many units were actually deployed (we confirmed only two OSHbots in 2014 and the 2016 plan for 11 stores)
• Measurements of customer and employee reactions (only ABC7’s one-line summary and expert opinion)
• Fellow Robots’ current status