Dusseldorf In the evening in the drugstore, the last purchases are done, it is quiet in the shop. But as soon as the doors are closed, a robot suddenly rolls through the corridors. Chunky at the bottom, with a long neck for scanning the shelves, that’s what the autonomous helper looks like.
Every night he records the structure of the branch, the exact location of the products and the inventory. By intelligently using this data, Ubica Robotics, the start-up behind the robot, promises retailers a significant increase in efficiency and productivity in their business processes.
The average range of a German supermarket includes 12,000 items, and there are even more than 20,000 in a drugstore. Keeping track of this is a challenge that comes at a high cost. Store logistics accounts for a large part of the total retail logistics chain costs. In order to counteract the increasing dominance of online shops, innovative concepts are needed for brick-and-mortar retail.
“We create a digital twin of the branch,” says co-founder Jonas Reiling, explaining the idea behind the company. At night, the robot drives through the branch, takes thousands of photos and then evaluates them using modern image recognition.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
The company has just received a coveted award. “Best Start-up” is the name of the category in which Reiling and his team won the 2022 Science Prize of the EHI Foundation. The EUR 50,000 prize is just one of many prizes that the company has received in recent months, including the Eurobotics Technology Transfer Award.
Fressnapf founder Toeller speaks of “revolution”
Torsten Toeller, owner of the pet supply chain Fressnapf, was on the jury for the science award and raves about the potential of the start-up. Ubica is “top European research,” he says. “This will revolutionize the logistics in the branch.”
Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fressnapf is enthusiastic about Ubica.
(Photo: dpa)
The start-up develops solutions for key retail problems. “Half of all supply chain costs are incurred in the branch,” reports Toeller from practice. If Ubica creates more efficiency there, it will be a real gain.
Customers would not notice anything about the robot, emphasizes Reiling. However, the data would make life easier for the employees in particular, because the artificial intelligence also takes care of the entire inventory.
For example, the evaluation can be used to identify gaps in shelves or products that are in the wrong place. The supply chain as well as the arrangement of the shelves and the walking routes in the branch could also be optimized. This leads to cost savings and a better shopping experience for customers.
Rewe and dm are testing the robots
The drugstore chain dm, for example, is currently testing the technology. “We are testing the use of mobile sensors from Ubica in various dm stores in Germany,” confirms Roman Melcher, IT Managing Director of dm. The aim is to develop innovative service offers for customers. “For example, individual product recommendations or navigation to the article on the shelf are conceivable,” says Melcher. In addition, the robots could support and relieve the employees in the branches.
Eight robots are currently in use, says Ubica boss Reiling. By the end of the year there should already be up to 50.
>> Read here: The robot as savior? This is what a strategy against unemployment could look like
Rewe Digital also has a cooperation with the start-up, in which possible applications for the robots are being examined. According to the company, these are still early tests, so an evaluation is not yet possible. However, “digital twins” of Rewe branches have already been created.
In 2020 the company was born at the University of Bremen. Ubica Robotics is based on the research results of the European Commission-funded project “REFILLS” (Robotics Enabling Fully‐Integrated Logistics Lines for Supermarkets). After the end of this project in the AI working group, the team was so convinced of the idea that they wanted to develop it further as a university spin-off. It was financed by the EXIST funding program of the Federal Ministry of Economics. The company is still in close contact with the University of Bremen today.
As early as 2018, the US company Bossa Nova Robotics concluded a contract with the world’s largest retail group.
(Photo: AP)
“This year we are showing that we have reached series maturity and now want to scale up,” says Reiling optimistically. But he also knows that it will not be an easy path.
The idea of a scanning robot is not new. As early as 2018, the US company Bossa Nova Robotics concluded a contract with the world’s largest retail group Walmart. The robots were on the move in over 500 branches, as reported by the “Wall Street Journal”. But the project failed, among other things due to the increase in online orders during the corona pandemic.
Robots do not compete with employees
Reiling is not unsettled by this and sticks to his idea. “Compared to the expensive hardware at Bossa Nova, we geared our robot to price-sensitive retailers from the start and deliver a broader, open database,” he says.
Robots have also been used in retail stores in Germany. Adler Moden, for example, uses inventory robots from Metalabs, which identify the goods using radio chips. According to an Adler spokesman, the acquisition costs for the robots have already been amortized after a year and a half.
The electronics retailer Media Markt even uses robots in customer contact. But this attempt did not get beyond the test stage.
>> Read here: Food truck manufacturer Roka is working against the shortage of skilled workers with pizza machines
There are currently three to four companies on the market working on a similar product to Ubica Robotics, says Reiling. In contrast to the competition, however, his company uses a different approach. “We’re not concentrating on a specific use case.” Ubica provides a general database that retailers can then use for many different applications. This means that the robot can be used much more variably.
The robot should not be a competitor to human employees. Rather, it should be supportive. The work should become more attractive because employees can invest the time they save in advising and supporting customers.
This also relieves the retailers, who are increasingly having problems finding enough employees for their branches. A study by the trade research institute EHI shows the dramatic shortage. 80 percent of the retailers surveyed stated that they could no longer adequately fill the positions in the branches.
The founder does not want to make any statements about the actual profitability of the robot for retailers. He does not give exact numbers, but he is self-confident: “We would not sell 50 robots if they were not useful.”
More: Baking pizza and loading luggage – these jobs will soon be taken over by computers and robots