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Some observations: - The ground clearance might pose a problem in a hardware store. Every time I visit a Lowes or Home Depot the floors have debris. Some aisle

Some observations: - The ground clearance might pose a problem in a hardware store. Every time I visit a Lowes or Home Depot the floors have debris. Some aisles will have products scattered on the floor (the screws/bolts/nuts aisle specially). - Ever try to use a touchscreen with dirty hands? - It will probably be used more by management to keep track of inventory. This I figure is the biggest benefit. Having the robot scan the store could potentially lower the amount of personnel required to do inventory counts. I'm excited about this. It might seem like a kiosk on wheels but could open up potential advancement/business opportunities once people get used to them. A lot of people still perceive robots as "evil".

hga 10y ago
The ground clearance might pose a problem in a hardware store. Every time I visit a Lowes or Home Depot the floors have debris. Some aisles will have products scattered on the floor (the screws/bolts/nuts aisle specially). This would seem to depend on the store, I've been spending a lot of time at each since I bought a house built in 1910 in late May, and that doesn't describe either of the ones I've been visiting (in Joplin, MO). A store that wants a LoweBot to succeed, or one picked to get one, would in theory try to make sure this is generally true, on the other hand, creating floor debris would be a way for the staff to throw a monkey-wrench into a deployment.
- Jack000 10y ago
  this should be pretty easily solved with a forward/downward facing depth sensor (to identify and avoid the debris). The fact that they didn't do this says to me that debris may not have been a major problem in testing.
  - hga 10y ago
    And/or it can deal with that it comes across. A thin package of screws and nuts, e.g. Home Depot sells a line where a huge selection is like $1.83 or $1.18 (e.g. each package will have a certain balanced set of nuts and bolts, or a few screws), and those packages are sufficiently flat I'd expect them to be no obstacle. Bigger stuff it could just push forward, ideally sensing when that was happening and backing up and going another way. The big trick would be the stuff just low enough to get under it, but that would then block it and get stuck. This is just off the top of my head, and I'm intrinsically not interesting in robots, I'll bet this is a well developed area in it by now.
KC8ZKF 10y ago
Stick a broom up their ass, and they can sweep the floor at the same time.

hga 10y ago

The ground clearance might pose a problem in a hardware store. Every time I visit a Lowes or Home Depot the floors have debris. Some aisles will have products scattered on the floor (the screws/bolts/nuts aisle specially). This would seem to depend on the store, I've been spending a lot of time at each since I bought a house built in 1910 in late May, and that doesn't describe either of the ones I've been visiting (in Joplin, MO). A store that wants a LoweBot to succeed, or one picked to get one, would in theory try to make sure this is generally true, on the other hand, creating floor debris would be a way for the staff to throw a monkey-wrench into a deployment.

Jack000 10y ago
this should be pretty easily solved with a forward/downward facing depth sensor (to identify and avoid the debris). The fact that they didn't do this says to me that debris may not have been a major problem in testing.
- hga 10y ago
  And/or it can deal with that it comes across. A thin package of screws and nuts, e.g. Home Depot sells a line where a huge selection is like $1.83 or $1.18 (e.g. each package will have a certain balanced set of nuts and bolts, or a few screws), and those packages are sufficiently flat I'd expect them to be no obstacle. Bigger stuff it could just push forward, ideally sensing when that was happening and backing up and going another way. The big trick would be the stuff just low enough to get under it, but that would then block it and get stuck. This is just off the top of my head, and I'm intrinsically not interesting in robots, I'll bet this is a well developed area in it by now.

KC8ZKF 10y ago

Stick a broom up their ass, and they can sweep the floor at the same time.