RFID Inventory Robot Tory Celebrates Its One Year Anniversary

The RFID inventory robot Tory from Metralabs GmbH celebrates its one year anniversary at the Adler fashion house in Erfurt. According to the manufacturer, Tory is the first RFID inventory robot in the world that is actually used in practice. It is said to be one of the most advanced mobile service robots on the global market. Tory records goods via RFID or NFC with an above-average rate of 99% in an international comparison. Tory can also be used as a shopping assistant to guide customers to the items they are looking for and to advise them on shopping. Equipped with the company's own navigation software from Metralabs, Tory should move completely autonomously and be able to avoid unexpected obstacles with ease.

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Roland Leitz, authorized officer and IT department manager at Adler Modemärkte AG, accompanied the introduction of the robot at Adler right from the start: “We are extremely satisfied with the results. Tory records the inventory at Adler autonomously, more reliably and much more regularly than the employees in the market could do in time. This enabled us to significantly optimize the availability of the goods on the shop floor and the ordering processes.”Since his first working day on December 1, 2015, Tory has covered approximately 400 km and scanned more than 5 million items. The average coverage rate was over 99.5%. Over the course of the year, Adler expanded its operations with other Torys to other branches. In the meantime, several robots are on the move in Adler fashion stores in Haibach, Rüsselsheim, Mutterstadt and Limburg.

The employees in the stores are happy about the active support from Tory. “Inventory was more of an annoying task. For us, the robot is a good tool and tool,”Heidi Scheeder, employee in the Adler fashion market in Erfurt, confirmed to the MDR in a television report.

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Efficient division of labor between man and machine

The world of work will change significantly as a result of the new technologies. How this work 4.0 will look is still open. But with Tory, Metralabs already wants to provide a successful example of how cooperation between humans and machines can succeed. The robot should not replace employees, but relieve them of time-consuming and less productive tasks. In this way you gain more time for customers.

So efficient division of labor - that's the idea behind Tory. His developers at Metralabs work for a future in which humans and robots share their work space and complement each other. Metralabs has many years of experience in mobile robotics. In 2007, the company launched the first interactive shopping robot that won the Thuringian Research Award. Since then, over 250 robots have been installed in various applications worldwide, which now have more than 70,000 km of driving experience. Metralabs has already implemented many different applications for service robots in restaurants, nursing homes, museums, shopping malls, in retail, in clean rooms and in industry.They interact and communicate with people and move with the help of the specially developed and field-tested navigation software, according to Metralabs, completely autonomously and safely even in dynamic environments.

The company plans further applications in the field of mobile service robots in the future. The latest developments extend to the areas of automated rack gap detection, planogram analysis and floor cleaning. The Tory RFID inventory robot is also to be continuously developed. For example, managing director and co-founder of Metralabs, Johannes Trabert, can imagine expanding the interaction functions of Tory so that shopping becomes an experience for the customer. (sh)

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