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Adler Modem?rkte, a German clothing retailer, is using the RFID-enabled robot Tory to take inventory and identify the location of goods in the store. The robot and the data management software are provided by MetraLabs, a German technology company.
Adler is working on a project involving two Tory robots, one in the Erfurt store and one in the Haibach head office. The company plans to expand its use to stores in other cities this evening. Roland Leitz, head of the company’s IT department, said that at present, Adler has attached passive EPC Gen2 UHF RFID tags to most of the products it sells, and has installed handheld readers in all 177 stores. He also added that compared to manual or QR code-based inventory management systems, the use of handheld RFID readers can significantly speed up inventory. However, Leitz also said that because the process requires an employee to walk around the store and the shelf and wave the reader, it also takes up the employee’s working time.
(The Tory robot in this store can read the tag IDs of items within 8 meters, up to 250 tags per second.)
The Tory robot can be placed in the store at will, using sensors to navigate, and reading tags while walking. Leitz explained: “Our goal is to further reduce management tasks, so that resources can be allocated to sales behavior. With the help of robots, inventory counts can be more frequent, so that the cargo data is more reliable.”
Leitz said that in October 2015, Adler started the deployment of robots and plans to deploy them in 10 stores this year. He said: “The number of stores where robots will be permanently deployed has not yet been determined. It depends on the results of the pilot phase.”
Johannes Trabert, co-founder of MetraLabs, said that currently, a total of 200 MetraLabs robots are in use in stores, museums, and industrial sites around the world. However, very few companies currently use the newly launched Tory robot for RFID inventory counting.
MetraLabs, founded in 2001, launched the first robot in 2007 to help customers locate items in the store. Early versions installed a 124kHz low-frequency reader on the bottom and passive low-frequency RFID tags on the floor to guide the robot to specific objects. According to Christian Reuther, the company’s senior software architect, MetraLabs designed and manufactured the reader itself. Tags (each tag ID corresponds to a specific location in the software), laser and image sensors provide navigation functions, so that the robot can know the specific location at all times. In addition, each product name is bound to a specific location, so that the robot can know the expected label of the goods.
In 2009, MetraLabs tested a robot with a built-in UHF reader in the laboratory of the University of Tübingen. But at the time, not many companies attached RFID tags to items, so the robot was not practical. Many changes have taken place in enterprises in the past five years. Large retailers have begun to attach labels to items or accept items marked with tags from suppliers.
Tory can achieve two functions: use the built-in Impinj UHF RFID reader to take inventory, and use lasers and image robots to find specific products for consumers. Trabert said the reader is equipped with a custom antenna array to achieve high precision and traditional retail usage scenarios. To determine the location of a particular product, consumers can use Tory’s touch screen to enter the name of the item. Then, the robot will query the relevant location information stored in the memory, and then the robot can use the sensor and the odometer to navigate to the side of the goods shelf. In this way, Tory can take inventory at night and provide services to consumers during the day.
To activate the inventory tracking function, the user first needs to establish the route or coverage area of the robot. This process can be done through the touch screen of the device. The screen will show the setting guidelines of “Scan Area”. The retail store needs to place the robot at the selected starting point, set the scanning area or route and press the “start” button.
Then, Tory can walk according to the set scanning area or navigation route, and the user can also press “Stop” to stop. The size of the robot is 1.5 meters high and 0.5 meters wide. It can be controlled remotely via a keyboard, handle, notebook or mobile phone, but manually pressing the machine is the most accurate way. The remote control method is often unable to accurately realize the navigation route of inventory counting. He said: “We usually recommend that customers use a pre-set route. In this way, the robot can automatically complete the inventory work automatically.”
Tory can store the route in the memory and take inventory according to the set route at any time later. Trabert said that if there are unexpected obstacles or shelf changes in the route, the navigation software will recalculate the ideal route.
According to Reuther, each store has almost unlimited routes or areas, but the inventory route is usually the most commonly used route. Other routes may be the routes of some specific categories or specific areas of cargo inventory.
The robot speed can reach 1 meter per second, but the user can also adjust the robot speed according to the label density in the area. Normally, Tory can read tags within 8 meters, up to 250 tags per second. The built-in memory can store 1 million tag reading data. The robot can transmit data to the server via WiFi or wired connection.
MetraLabs software runs on the retailer’s database and stores the inventory information of each shelf. If the robot fails to read the expected tag ID at a specific location, the robot can transmit the possible missing tag ID through the WiFi connection.
Trabert claims that the reading speed of the robot is 10 times that of a human hand-held reader.
(Exclusive manuscript of rfid world network, please indicate the source author for reprinting!)
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