Shoppers at the Giant Food Store on Union Deposit Road in Lower Paxton Township may have noticed an unexpected guest roving the aisles.

Meet Marty.

The slender gray robot with googly eyes maneuvers freely around the store. Some shoppers give the machine quizzical looks; others snap selfies with the robot.

He looks futuristic but friendly.

"That's really nifty," said Kala Dowdrick of Dauphin, who was shopping in the store's produce section. "I was like, 'What does that actually do?"

The robot is part of a test program by Giant Food Stores' parent company, Ahold USA, which oversees Stop & Shops and Giants in Landover, among other chains. It is being developed by Badger Technologies in Lexington, Kentucky.

Nationwide, other retailers including Target, Amazon and Wal-Mart have been testing and/or using robots.

Marty the robot is being tested at Giant Food Stores on Union Deposit Road in Lower Paxton Township.

"We recognize an opportunity to have a robot that could give us an assistance in the building to our associates. The robot can't do the work of the associates but he can report out information and data to us that is a value, not only to us as a business, but to our customers," said Patrick Maturo, manager of store optimization for Ahold USA.

Marty makes his trek around the store multiple times a day. He starts in the beer and wine cafe, winds his way through produce and over to the meat department.

The robot is equipped with scanners so he doesn't bump into displays or shoppers. He also has several internal cameras that reach about three fourths of the way down aisles, Maturo said.

He is powered by a rechargeable lithium battery.

The robot's main job right now is to scans for trip or slip hazards on the floor, from dropped water bottles to tissue paper near the bake shop's doughnut case.

The machine also has secondary functions.

He can read unit tags and recognize if items are out-of-stock on the shelf, then alert employees whether items are available in the stock room and generate a replenishment report, Maturo said.

And he checks prices.

"Marty can actually look at a unit tag on the shelf, read that unit tag, reference it back to the front register system and know whether or not that tag is reflective of the correct retail price," Maturo added.

One thing Maturo said Marty will not do is replace employees.

"Marty can't do the work that the associates do, so Marty is doing assistant work. He is also doing work we that we currently don't have people doing on a routine basis," Maturo said.

In fact, shoppers can expect to see more robots in Ahold's stores. By 2018, Ahold USA hopes to have an expanded pilot program with a dozen robots operating at its Stop & Shop, Giant of Carlisle and Giant Landover stores, Maturo said.