In the era of rapid economic development of big data, information and networking have been all over our daily life. With the advent of the Internet of Things era, as well as the high-speed development and innovation of 5G, AI, unmanned driving, artificial intelligence and other technologies, the traditional retail industry is moving forward to smart retail, and the basic retail facilities are becoming intelligent and collaborative.
The sudden outbreak at the end of 2019 intensified online traffic competition in the retail industry. Offline retailers have felt the crisis and are looking for transformation and breakthrough.
Digitization and intelligentization derived from Internet have become the focus of many enterprises in recent years. Shang super enterprises are also making new explorations and attempts in store upgrading, transformation and new retail mode. The new retail of online and offline integration has become the general trend. Traditional supermarkets need to increase the combination of technology and operation with the Internet, accelerate the transformation and development, give full play to the advantages of online and offline integration, improve operation efficiency and core competitiveness, and transform into intelligent retail.
Commercial supermarkets are often the places with the largest and most intensive human flow, especially on weekends and holidays, the cleaning task is even more difficult. At present, supermarkets usually use manual cleaning or traditional cleaning equipment for cleaning operations, which brings the following three pain points to the cleaning work of supermarkets.
Difficult to clean
Shang Chao ground is mainly marble and small square brick, the ground is difficult to clean. Manual cleaning will not only lead to low cleaning efficiency, but also easy to have water stains residue. The ground is wet and slippery, and customers will inevitably fall down, which brings great hidden dangers to the safety of the supermarket.
Figure source network
Cleaning time is limited
Supermarkets are open for longer hours, usually more than 12 hours. It is not easy to clean thoroughly when customers come and go during business hours. If water stains remain on the ground, it will leave a bad shopping experience for customers. And can only do large-scale work at night or before opening the shop.
Cleaning effect is not stable
Supermarkets have different cleaning requirements for each area. Fruit and vegetable and cooked food areas are more likely to produce garbage, which requires a relatively high frequency of cleaning in these areas.
In addition, conventional robot products are prone to the following three cleaning problems in the supermarket scene.
Complex working conditions
- Its ubiquitous escalators are a danger for robots to fall.
- The glass fence and glass wall are easy to interfere with the laser of the robot and affect its navigation.
- Numerous shelves, narrow channels, scattered vegetable leaves and soil in the supermarket test the robot’s passing ability, cleaning mechanism, edge fitting ability and cleaning ability greatly.
- Supermarket crowd, especially the elderly or children, cleaning operations test the robot’s ability to avoid obstacles, pressure foot measures.
- Hollowed-out shelves, one-meter noodles and temporary booths pose challenges to the robot’s environmental perception and task division design.
The noise
When the cleaning robot starts the water absorption and dust absorption motor, the noise is often loud, which is easy to affect the shopping experience of customers. Silent mode design needs to be considered.
Cleaning personnel are not highly educated
Supermarket cleaning personnel are often older and less educated. If the design of robot interactive interface and maintenance is not simple enough, it will be difficult for cleaning personnel to get started quickly.
Wysiwyg is a foolproof interface
At present, it has been solved by IT-Robotics for the cleaning problem of the supermarket scene.
The cleaning time of the supermarket is usually in the morning, noon and empty at night, which undoubtedly brings cleaning pressure to the cleaning staff. Through robot operation, only need to sweep the floor first and then wash the ground thoroughly in the evening or early morning, and use the sweeper to push the dust mode routine cleaning during the business can meet the cleaning needs of the supermarket.
The IT-Robotics uses laser radar, depth vision fusion and a variety of sensors, accurate positioning. The virtual wall can be divided to avoid dangerous areas. Even when passing through areas with falling risks such as stairs, the virtual wall can be judged independently to prevent falling.
At present, robots on the market are easy to navigate under the influence of glass interference laser, so it is difficult to get close to the glass within 1m. When there are glass railings in supermarket corridors and other areas, they can work with edges.
In addition, it human robot with its small figure, can be flexible shuttle in the supermarket and other narrow aisle work, sweep suction car with patent can be feed-back four side brush design to ensure the bottom of the shelf, corner and other sanitary dead corner cleaning work, at the same time to prevent knocking down the shelf.
At the same time, the machine is equipped with sweeping/floor cleaning, mute/dust push modes to meet the different cleaning needs of the supermarket. Example: In order to prevent the noise of machine operation from disturbing customers during business period, the dust push/mute mode can be turned on. The suction motor/suction motor will stop working and only sweep the floor/dust push operation can be carried out to ensure a good shopping experience for customers.
As the layout of shelves is too similar, robots are prone to misjudge the probability of highly repetitive scenes. IT-Robotics can attach corresponding shelf position codes to the shelves, and assist positioning with autonomous recognition codes.
In terms of cleaning capacity, the floor washing vehicle in IT-Robotics has an adaptive water suction scraper, a double brush plate with 15kg pressure, and a large suction water absorption motor, which has excellent cleaning capacity. Suction car with four side brush, double roller brush design combined with large suction motor and dust push has good cleaning ability for solid waste.
IT-Robotics hope to help retail wisdom upgrade, enhance corporate image, optimize user experience, and jointly promote the innovation and development of the entire Retail industry in China.