IT SHOULD BE INTERESTING

Lowe's the big NYSE-traded Home Depot competitor in the do-it-yourself home fix-it business is set to introduce robotic shopping assistants next month in California, according to the Wall Street Journal

The first such robots in America, they bring to mind the old yin-yang principle in the increasing decline of employment importance of the human worker. Judge for yourself from the now nearly ubiquity of robot-guided menus one gets when calling companies these days.

And that leaving out for the moment drones, as the say in poker, is just for openers. It has all the earmarks of a genocide, a species annihilation.

Big-box stores once offered convenience with one-stop shopping. But with Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +1.92% and smartphones, customers can check stock and read reviews and details about products.

“Instead of seeming ultra-convenient, the big-box experience starts to look like it has a lot of friction,” said Doug Stephens, founder of advisory firm Retail Prophet. “If robots are a means of alleviating some of that friction, I’d expect to see a lot more robots,” he added.

As customers follow OSHbot to the correct aisle, they will see ads for in-store specials on its back screen as they pass various departments, communicated through in-store beacons. Customers who need help with, say, a specific type of plumbing project can initiate a video conference on OSHbot’s front screen with available experts at any Orchard store. 

OSHbot also can help customers match a certain-size nail or hinge with a 3D-scanner and determine immediately if the part is in stock. In the future, OSHbot may be able to create the part with a 3-D printer, said Marco Mascorro, CEO of Fellow Robots, based in Mountain View, Calif.

To navigate the Orchard store, OSHbot uses lasers to sense its surroundings, the same light detection and ranging system, also called Lidar, used by Google Inc. GOOGL +0.62% ’s autonomous cars. OSHbot creates a map of its surroundings using technology called simultaneous localization and mapping that it can refer to later. By matching the map it creates to the Orchard Supply map of where products are located in the store, it can lead a customer to a specific hinge or hammer.

I think we’re going to see a rush of companies wanting to be the first [in their industry] to have robots. ” —Andra Keay, managing director of Silicon Valley Robotics

 A rush of robots translates into more than likely a big rushing sound of humans beings ushered out the workplace door.

Now don't get us wrong because we get it. Robots bring many employer benefits to the workplace. As far as we now know, no lost maternity time, no mandatory 401K contributions, sick leave or social security matching for starters, not to mention fewer needed temps.

So the big octopi in places like Brussels and Washington who love to tax employers and now perhaps robots will have to conjure some new stuff. Mostly likely it will force them to actually do some work--that is, until the populace elects the first robot.

It should be interesting.