A 6-foot-tall slender robot with LED lights and three cameras moves slowly down the aisles of a North Huntingdon store, scanning thousands of items hanging on hooks and laying on shelves, checking the entire inventory and recording what is missing in matter of a few hours.
As the robot scans the tools, paint, plumbing, electrical and hardware items that fill the Busy Beaver Building Centers Inc. home improvement store, it is helping keep employees free to serve customers, said Adam Gunnett, director of information technology and marketing for the Oakmont-based chain.
It takes photos and focuses on the empty shelves, Gunnett said.
Busy Beaver is working with Badger Technologies of Nicholasville, Ky., on a six-week pilot program in the North Huntingdon store.
They are “working out the kinks” and hope to have it operating by Thanksgiving, Gunnett said.
“It typically takes a designated associate (employee) 80 hours a week to scan and check the entire store,” with manual inventory shelf scanners for sold out inventory because they are busy with other tasks, such as helping customers or working the cash register, Gunnett said.
After completing one round of storewide inventory, someone has to do the same task the next week, he said.
Instead, the autonomous robot with Badger’s software can scan the entire inventory in the evening, when they are fewer customers, download the data to Badger Technologies, which it turn sends it to Busy Beaver computer system. That data is available for the store manager in the morning, so they know what items must be ordered and restocked, Gunnett said. It also verifies prices on the tags of more than 30,000 stock-keeping units.
So far, it is working out well for employees, said Tracy Klein, store manager.
“It is going to save probably a good three to four hours a day” of an employee’s time, Klein said.
In addition to time, another advantage is that “it’s not going to have human error,” said Stephanie Micklow, an employee who often checks inventory.
“The goal is to augment the staff with it, not to replace staff,” Gunnett said.
Busy Beaver anticipates getting a return on its $40,000 investment in the autonomous robot program by freeing up staff for other tasks, Gunnett said.
“It almost pays for itself in labor (costs),” Gunnett said.
To set it up, Badger Technologies personnel walked a special camera around the entire store where the robot would move, so that the information could be programmed into the robot. With its sensors and cameras, the robot won’t run into a person “but a person could run into it,” Gunnett joked.
The company had been studying the use of a robot to scan inventory since about 2018, Gunnett said. But, like so many other plans businesses had for development, the covid pandemic postponed any implementation.
The company plans to use a Badger Technologies robot in the new store it intends to open in the first quarter of next year at a former movie theatre along Route 22 in Salem, Gunnett said. Busy Beaver has 24 stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, including one that recently opened in East Huntingdon.
In the next five to 10 years, “I think most of your retail stores will have it,” Gunnett said. “The potential is amazing.”