Tally Bot
Overview
Within modern retail stores and supermarkets, it is an overall priority for the company to increase revenue and efficiency of the store while still upholding a positive consumer experience.
Companies therefore, are looking to specifically employ new robotic systems from self checkout to inventory robots with the overall priority to reduce workloads, increase stock accuracy, eliminate human errors and enhance the stores marketing opportunities.
This project will highlight the critical aspects of the tally bot project.
Approach
This project report aims to model the employment of an autonomous inventory robot.
The TurtleBot will be programmed to demonstrate the expected operations of an inventory robot. More specifically, this would involve mapping of the shelves, identification of the product on a shelf by scanning via a camera, the ability to send and receive information between the robot and PC regarding the inventory, have an efficient movement through the supermarket and have a user-friendly GUI.
The physical demonstration of the TurtleBot will involve a model of a range of shelves typically found in a supermarket (at camera level). The TurtleBot will then follow the aisles and scan the products.
The scan must return a variety of information concerning the product and its location in the supermarket as a whole. The TurtleBot being modified will be a TurtleBot 3 Burger platform with a camera attached.
Furthermore, it is a restriction that no significant hardware can be introduced. The movement of the turtlebot must follow the aisles and be able to maneuver through them without collision or any major complications causing it to stop for extended periods of time or causing damage to the environment and itself.
The University of Sydney
Vishant Prasad