From SCDigest's OnTarget e-Magazine
- June 17, 2015 -
I, RFID Robot
Tesco Stores Piloting New Robot to Roam Apparel Aisles and Read Item-Level Tags
SCDigest Editorial Staff
Well, why not - how about combining two hot technologies, robotics and item level RFID in retail, to come up with a new solution?
SCDigest Says: |
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RFspot is also working on automated tools for the robots to open doors and operate elevators in situations in which they must move from one room to another through a door.
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What Do You Say?
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That's exactly what F&F, the apparel banner under the UK's Tesco stores, is now attempting in a pilot that will use mobile robots to take inventories by reading tags in an automated fashion.
The six-foot tall robots (see graphic below) come from a company called RFspot in California, and are being piloted in five UK Tesco stores with F&F departments. While officially the called RFspot Pro, F&F has nicknamed the robot "Robbie."
The robots will travel about store aisles and stock rooms to do reads of RFID tagged items. Usually, RFID tagged are read by store associates using handheld devices. Some stores are piloting what are often referred to as "wide area readers," devices mounted in the ceiling capable of continuous reads of tagged items over a decent amount of store floor square footage, but this technology is still immature.
F&F says the robots are much faster than the manual tag reading processes, which of course itself is far faster than the traditional approach of scanning item bar codes to take store inventory (and also much more accurate).
The robots roam the floor, continually scanning tens of thousands of items as they move along the aisles at about one meter per second on three sets of wheels, reading tags from as far as 30 feet away. The reads will be able to locate a specific tagged item down to a location on a specific shelf.
F&F says the robots can scan a full store in about an hour, compared to about 8-9 hours using manual reading by associates. That latter figure seems high to us, based on reports from other stores using RFID, but clearly the robots would further automate the process. However, there actually is a person wirelessly controlling the robot from elsewhere in the store.
In addition to the tag reading automation and item-location tracking, the technology will enable F&F managers to see when tagged items have been misplaced on the wrong shelf or rack, when shelves need restocking, or which product displays are resulting in the highest volume of sales.
(RFID and AIDC Story Continued Below)
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RFspot is also working on automated tools for the robots to open doors and operate elevators in situations in which they must move from one room to another through a door, or to a different floor.