This morning as I was wandering around Target on my usual weekly run I noticed what I like to think of as the BullsEye Coven (the weekly staff meeting or huddle or whatever they hold in the middle of the the main aisle and always in my way) except twice as large. My goal was to get into the pet aisle so when I saw an opening I skootched my cart right in and came to a screeching halt. Mid-aisle stood – or rolled, rather- something that looked out of Short Circuit. (For those who recall the 1986 sci-fi film, it centered around a military robot turned cute personal bot named Johnny 5.)
A very tall, very naked bot stood before me in front of the dog bones. At first it turned towards me and the movement was what startled me. Its lights flashed and then it turned around and started slowly to the end of the aisle, seemingly scanning the shelves of bones with its row of lights. At this point I hit the gas and followed it in hot pursuit. The bot turned the corner and was now definitely scanning and a woman I didn’t know was behind me pardoned herself and asked if I’d answer a few questions.
So turns out Target (at least the Waterfront store) is trying out some new bots this week and they’re studying customer reaction. Now when I visit Target it’s usually not long after opening and there’s one checkout open and lots of stocking going on. I’m not sure how many reactions they got but I doubt many other people went following it. The woman asked me what my reaction was to it, did I know what it was doing, had I ever experienced bots before in a store and did I associate it with Target?
Well my reaction was curiousity. What was this fellow doing blocking my path and where was it going from there? What was it going to do? I thought it was scanning product barcodes and bingo, I was right. I was told that the bot is autonomous and can sense the end of the aisles to turn. Its purpose it to scan the barcodes but also the empty spaces on the shelves to calculate where restocking needs to occur (I guess instead of sending someone to every aisle to inventory by hand Business Insider speculates retail workers in places such as Target are doomed with the dawn of this type of robot http://www.businessinsider.com/retail-workers-replaced-by-robots-2014-3 ).
I’ve experienced bots in the medical field for over 10 years now from medibots to cleaning bots to stocking bots. Bots have come a long way in the technology itself but also in our relationship with them. I’m not sure how much is being recorded this week during the trial but for myself anyway, I notice that I’ve gone from running away from a medibot stuck in an elevator (now really, a big box with wheels and a light stuck ramming itself wrong way into an elevator) to waving good bye to the Target bot (just a big pillar with lights and wheels more or less) on my way to checkout. The bots have arrived and we’re okay with it, if not a little cautious til we all get to know each other.
The Target bot is made by Bossa Nova Robotics, which will be familiar to Pittsburghers as part of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute http://www.bnrobotics.com/#!about/cq29 . I assume the model is based on the mObi Ballbot platform but I didn’t notice any additional model indicated on the bot itself. I wasn’t able to get a photo at the time and so went back about an hour later to do so- I found the bot and a friend left in a back aisle with no-one around so got a few snaps and continued on. I wonder how many breaks a bot gets on the job?
It will be interesting to see if the bots do ever show up in Target and how these will be introduced to Target shoppers. When asked if I associated the bot with Target, I said no because it wasn’t ‘dressed.’ What I meant was, it had no red bullseye or other Target insignia, not that I didn’t associate bot technology with Target. To me, it was just another visitor to the store. What will be even more interesting, is how will Target shoppers’ reactions change the future of bots in retail?
