PRE2018 1 Group3 1203310

Introduction:

With the fast advances of technology there is a lot of change that the world is undergoing now. A lot of everyday tasks get more automated and some of these are taken over by a robot counterpart. Here we will take a look into the world of automated grocery shopping, or at least part of it in this case. We are talking about a robotic store clerk that could be able to do the same things a regular one would do. One of these tasks are navigation around the store, but most of the time a common store clerk does not think a lot about it. If someone would want to design a robotic counterpart, there are several obstacles you would have to overcome. Obstacles in a literal sense, like store shelves, customers, shopping carts etc. There are apparently some cases that are interesting to look at and what effect they have to the shelf filling experience. What we are focussing on in this case is a robots interaction with the way customers act in tandem with a shopping cart. A shopping cart plays an interesting factor in the behavior of an average consumer.

Problem statement:

Ever wondered how customers move about in a store? Are you aware of your own behavior when moving about and how much do you take your environment in consideration. These are all questions that can be asked when we are talking about the navigation around a store. So when someone would design a robot to do the same activities, this should all be taken into consideration. The main differences between a robot and a human should be highlighted to know what we are capable of and look at the things we could take advantage of.

When navigating around a store you are bound to encounter an obstacle in your way. Most humans know how to move about in these settings, mostly because of prior experiences and common knowledge. Besides that, they are more flexible to adapt in different occasions, for example when another customer makes eye contact and almost instantly act accordingly. A robot has to be programmed in a certain way to process this type of cues to act in the best possible way. Even though a human has an upper hand in this occasion, there are some other things a robot can do, that a human can't. What we are mainly talking about is the sensory input a robot is capable of, besides the 5 main senses a human possesses.

The obstacles an agent could encounter can be devided in a couple of groups:

- Immobile

- Boxes

- Loose products

- Mobile/movable

- Carts

- Baskets

- Human customers

- Regular customers

- Customers with baskets

- Customers with shopping carts

What we are focussing in this case is the behavior of mainly customers with shopping carts and how an agent could act with them. There are a couple of reasons why this in particular is interesting. One of these things is that customers make it look like they act with irregular behavior, but there are some aspects we could take into consideration to maybe predict their actions in advance to eventually act upon these predictions. some of these are the effect of a customer that is pushing a cart compared to regularly moving about. What the popular isles are, especially for customers with carts. Besides that there is some phenomena like cart abandonement, how children act around and the lay-out of a supermarket to name a few.