The tall, slender robot that roamed the aisles of a Lowe’s home improvement store in Sunnyvale Tuesday didn’t have arms, legs or a head. But it represented an emerging face of the retail industry.

The robot prototype made by Bossa Nova Robotics, a San Francisco company, presages the automation that customers could start encountering soon in Lowe’s and other retail stores, even if their presence means fewer jobs for human employees.

In Lowe’s, the robot’s job is simple. It rolls up and down the aisles auditing the shelves to make sure they’re stocked with the correct products at the correct prices. If there are gaps on the shelves, the robot lets the human store workers know so they can restock the shelves.

That’s the kind of thankless, time-consuming job that is better left to automation than human workers, said Martin Hitch, CEO of the 10-year-old Bossa Nova, which spun out of robotics research at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. And he said his company is ready to start rolling out more robots for Lowe’s and other retailers in 2017. The one in the Sunnyvale Lowe’s is still a prototype and does not have a full-time job. But Hitch said after three years of testing at Lowe’s locations in Pennsylvania in addition to this week’s test in Sunnyvale, the company is now ready to build full-time working models that should be in stores by 2017.

“What we drive is productivity on the store floor,” Hitch said. For a store’s employees, he said, “going around looking for gaps is not a productive task.”

Retailers like Amazon, which purchased robot maker Kiva for $775 million in 2012, are already incorporating robots and other automation in warehouses where customers aren’t present. But companies like Bossa Nova and Simbe Robotics, a San Francisco startup, are developing a new line of robots that audit inventory even as they share store aisles with customers.

Although Simbe executives declined to name stores they are working with, Target spokeswoman Jenna Reck confirmed that Simbe’s robot, called the Tally, is one of “a few different” robots the company has tested in “a handful of San Francisco stores” this year.

“Potentially, we’ve shown retailers what the future of retail looks like,” said Simbe CEO and co-founder Brad Bogolea.

Back to Gallery Robot retail is here 11 1 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 2 of 11 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 3 of 11 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 4 of 11 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 5 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 6 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 7 of 11 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 8 of 11 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 9 of 11 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 10 of 11 Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle 2006 11 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle





















Analysts from Gartner, a research group, agree. In a report released in December, they said, “retailers must come to grips with the fact that smart machines will be the catalyst for one of the most disruptive eras in retail.”

But robots that wander the aisles checking inventory, like the Tally and Bossa Nova’s model, could become more commonplace in the next few years as retailers seek ways to drive down rising labor costs, said David Marcotte, senior vice president for the research firm Kantar Retail.

“They need to find some way to reduce labor costs by at least one person per store, and that’s where robots come in,” Marcotte said in an interview. “In the next year or two, you‘re going to see more of that kind of robot spreading out to other retailers.”

Bossa Nova and Simbe said they are designing their robots so as not to be intimidating to customers. They can’t be too tall, and they are not supposed to move into someone’s personal space. They are designed to stay out of a customer’s way.

The Bossa Nova robot is now about 6 feet tall, 14 inches wide, and comes with 11 cameras and 22 LED lights that help it scan the shelves. Future models will be shorter, but slightly wider at the base, Hitch said.

The Tally is also tall and slim, with no limbs or face, although it does have a display that shows two green circles that flip on their sides, almost simulating eyes blinking.

Making it “simple, approachable, cute, friendly are all major requirements in gaining the empathy of the shopper,” said Simbe product designer and co-founder Jeff Gee. “You have to avoid creepy.”

Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: ChronicleBenny