In an era of exponential change, organizations are developing core competencies in rapidly developing and introducing technology to retain long-term competitive advantage. Lowe’s, the world’s second-largest home improvement retailer, created the Lowe’s Innovation Labs (LIL) to lead retail innovation.

Over time, the retail experience has remained largely unchanged. A customer identifies a need, comes to the store and hopes they find the desired item or staff with relevant expertise. This experience often fails to live up to current consumer expectations for speedy, accurate assistance.

Leveraging a process known as science fiction prototyping, LIL tasked science fiction writers with envisioning the future of the shopping experience. As a result of this process, LIL developed and introduced the OSHbot autonomous retail service robot in a 10-month period.

Working with our partners, LIL built the OSHbot to help customers shop smarter, navigate stores more efficiently, and instantly access information to confidently complete home improvement projects.

Two autonomous retail service robots were deployed at Orchard Supply Hardware in December 2014 for a five-month proof of concept. The announcement generated extreme interest in the U.S. and around the world, as the OSHbot is one of the first deployments of robotics in a setting almost everyone has had an experience with – a home improvement store.

LIL and our partners were both very aware of the Uncanny Valley, a hypothesis that when a subject, such as a robot, looks and moves almost, but not exactly, like human beings, it causes revulsion among humans. For the OSHbot program to be a success, the message had to be clear: that the OSHbot was a tool to augment customers and employees, much like a smart phone, and not a threat or challenge to jobs.

OSHbot is the first robot designed specifically for the retail environment and the core innovation is found in advancements in natural language processing as well as the way that it integrates existing navigation, speech recognition, search and user interface platforms in new ways to support employees and customers.

OSHbot leverages LIDAR sensors to autonomously map and navigate the store, as well avoid collisions. Advancements in natural language processing and cloud computing allow customers and employees to speak directly to the robot, in English or Spanish, an intuitive experience for many customers and employees.

Additional advancements in navigation and natural language processing were achieved by deploying the robot in a real-world store setting, as ensuring smooth operation with noise and traffic variables in the store had never been accomplished before.

Power management is another key advancement, as the robot operates a near eight-hour shift in the store without requiring an external power source.

Prior to working with LIL, our partner had developed other robotics technology, but by working together based on LIL’s feedback about requirements for the retail setting, the partnership drove technological advancement further and faster than either could have imagined at the outset.

The proof of concept has been deployed in one store and our partners have assigned two engineers to work with the robot throughout its operating hours each day. In December these engineers stood alongside the robot to monitor interactions and gather feedback, and over time this support team has transitioned to a back room in the store as the robot transitions to fully autonomous operation.

Upcoming phases of development will be to introduce three additional languages, 3D scanning and identification of product, product scanning and inventory tracking and locally-based advertising displays promoting product the robot is passing in the store.

LIL innovates by rapidly deploying technology proofs of concept in order to iterate based on real-world feedback from customers and employees after interacting with the technology in their environment. Lowe’s Innovation Labs intent is to continue developing the tool to scale across the larger Lowe’s Companies, Inc. enterprise.

The LIL innovation story is also shifting internal and external perceptions of Lowe’s. The launch generated thousands of news stories around the world with positive messages reinforcing Lowe’s position that robots augment customers and employees and improves the shopping experience.

More than 30 percent of customers reported awareness of OSHbot during a December 2014 intercept survey, entirely attributable to earned media. Foot traffic to the store has also increased as a result of people coming in specifically looking for OSHbot. Additionally, organizations around the world have contacted LIL to explore how robotics technology can be deployed for their industry, a critical component of the Labs’ overall strategy to innovate through uncommon partnerships.

Since deploying one robot in December, the robot has transitioned to autonomous operations, a second robot has been introduced, Spanish language capabilities have been added and natural language processing and autonomous navigation capabilities continue to be refined.