Johnny Cab from Total Recall, Ash from Alien, and Wall-E from its self-titled movie. Automated robots meant to help us humans and make our lives easier have been sprinkled all over the science fiction landscape for years. Now, they are beginning to walk off the pages and the screens of fiction and into reality.
Perhaps a hardware store is not the first place you would have expected to find one of these robots, but that is exactly where you will find OSHbot. OSHbot is a robot that can use facial recognition to know when a human approaches and ask what you are looking for, find its location for you in the store, and even lead you to the given product if you so desire.
As Fast Company reports, Lowe’s believes this helpful robot is more than just a gimmick as it can do things most human employees can’t, such as recognizing and conversing English, Spanish, and five different Asian languages.
While OSHbot might not be as widespread as Johnny Cab, as lifelike as Ash, or as oddly cute as Wall-E, it does have the benefit of not being fictional and already helping people in the real world.
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