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San Francisco Lowe's stores to get robot workers this fall
Shoppers at San Francisco area Lowe's stores are about to encounter a new kind of customer service worker: The LoweBot. Sound familiar? It might: Lowe's Innovation Labs first showed off an autonomous shopping assistant at CES 2015. Back then it was called OSHBot (for Orchard Supply Hardware), and it was still a work in progress. Not anymore -- the LoweBot is scheduled to make its public debut this fall at 11 Bay Area hardware stores.
Lowe's Innovation Labs redefine retail with robots and VR
It's weird to think that a humble DIY store is making groundbreaking strides to innovate retail stores, but that's what Lowe's Innovation Labs was set up to do. The company unveiled two pretty neat concepts for the future of shops in the last few months: a robotic store assistant that patrols the aisles of an Orchard Supply in San Jose, and a virtual reality interior-decoration tool that's currently in operation in two stores in Toronto.
Yup, robots are coming to take our retail jobs, too
Elon Musk may be terrified of self-controlling robots, but the retail industry is clearly hoping they'll save cash in the long term. Nestle, for instance, has purchased 20 copies of Softbank's Pepper robot as the new spokes-droid for its food business in Japan. If successful, then the food manufacturer could have up to 1,000 of the cute yet disturbing devices pimping Nestle vending machines across the country. It's not just limited to robot-friendly Japan, either, since Lowe's has announced that it's hired a robotic employee to help customers find stock in its San Jose Orchard Supply store. The OSHBot comes with a pair of displays, one to bombard you with offers and another to let you video conference with an in-store expert hiding in the back. That said, it's hard not to be concerned for all of the workers who could be handed a pink slip in favor of the Terminator's doe-eyed cousin.
