Indigenous Store Inducer Zeal an Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR)

3 min readFeb 8, 2023

“Stock checking robots in Retail Logistics ”

Why Robots in Retail Industry

With retail industries progressing exponentially, it has posed significant challenges that companies and stakeholders need to meet for production stability. In the retail industry, customer experience is a major factor. Product unavailability when a customer needs can disappoint them and the retailers can’t build their customers. It is important to check the availability of stocks every time so that we will not fall into these problems. It is also difficult for the staff to patiently handle customers as well as the availability of products. So a system to handle these repetitive tasks is in need.

Proposed Solution

Indigenous store inducers help to check the irregularities that occur during product arrangement and stock quantity management and guide the customers to their desired product with an aligned map to the location. The QR codes on all the racks are scanned and the products are identified by image classification in order to devise the map for the locations of corresponding products. The robot surveillances the whole block checking the presence and quantity of the specified products. Any irregularities observed are recognized and reported instantly to the management. The Updation of stocks can be viewed at any time through the IOT Dashboard

Tools/Technology :

Tools used:

1. A camera and Depth camera for computer vision and object classification.

2. A 2-D lidar for G mapping.

Technologies used:

1.Computer vision and Deep learning(DL) for object classification.

2. Image processing for object classification.

3. A Voice-based AI chatbot for interaction with customers.

4. A Website to showcase the product availability in-store to the store owners.

5. An QR code scanner(camera) to identify and assist with the location of products in the store.

6. Simultaneous Localization and Mapping(SLAM), a ROS gmapping technique for autonomous navigation of the bot through the store.

Cameras And other Sensors :

● The shelves can be lit with ambient illumination, or in some embodiment, by an array of LED or other directable light sources positioned near the cameras.

● A Tilt controllable, the high-resolution camera placed on the camera support can be used to detect shelf tags and their content, involving the price and product name, decode their barcodes, determine products’ positions and orientations

● Using these image processing techniques we can categorize and notify the shopkeepers to replace the uneven products and refill the sold product in the relevant position

Docking And Charging system :

● To ensure the autonomous operation of mobile robots, we provide a charging docking station

● The robot autonomously goes back to the charging station and connects when its battery falls under has been set up limits.

● It can also be programmed to regularly recharge between supplies, such as when it returns to a warehouse or depot

Autonomous navigation:

● To achieve the state of autonomous navigation we use a ROS G-mapping technique named SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping).

● In this method with the help of the 2-D lidar, initially a 2-D map of the environment is mapped, and then using this map and SLAM we can make the bot move autonomously in the store.

● The bot is also capable of guiding the customers toward their required products. Voice-based AI chatbot and UI:

● Customer comfortness is essential for retail stores to be successful.

● To achieve this a Voice-based AI chatbot that can respond to customers. And also, an UI is provided to users to track the store. Shop owners can track their products anywhere using the website