A003 / Future Stores

LoweBot

  • 2017
  • Robotics
LoweBot in an aisle of a Lowe's Home Improvement store.

Future Stores

A helping hand for customers and associates

Over the years, Lowe’s Innovation Labs has explored the use of in-store robotics to help customers better navigate our stores, and to help associates understand on-shelf and top-stock inventory.

Back in 2017, Labs introduced one of the first customer- and associate-facing robots within a big box home improvement store with LoweBot.

African-American male customer in a Lowe's Home Improvement store using the LoweBot to search for a product.

See LoweBot in Action

What it is

LoweBot was a prototype, exploring how Autonomous Retail Service Robot (ARSR) technology could improve and enhance in-store service within a large scale retail environment. LoweBot was introduced within a handful of stores in the Bay Area.

A resource for Lowe's customers

LoweBot was designed to help customers find what they are looking for and keep them up-to-date on current promotions. 

For example, LoweBot could help customers with more simple needs navigate through the store and guide them to the product they are looking for, allowing them get in and out quickly with exactly what they need.  

If a customer told LoweBot they need a hammer, it displayed all available options for a customer to choose from. Leveraging store mapping technology, it then guided them to their selected hammer at its exact location in the store.  

Female customer in a Lowe's Home Improvement store using the LoweBot to search for a product.
A helping hand for Lowe's associates

LoweBot was designed to be another tool to enhance our employees’ ability to serve customers by addressing simple questions and enabling employees to focus on more complex questions and delivering trusted project advice. 

Additionally, we explored how LoweBot could streamline processes, facilitate real-time inventory management and contribute to business decisions by detecting inventory patterns across the enterprise.

LoweBot was an early, pivotal step into in-store robotics for our team, and not necessarily the last. With our work in store digital twins, Lowe’s Innovation Labs continues to explore a variety of methods inspired by LoweBot to help arm our associates with accurate data.

Male Lowe's Home Improvement store associate programming a LoweBot.

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