Powercast, together with Badger Technologies – a specialist in retail automation – is showing a prototype of an all-in-one robotic price-changing system. The Robotic RFID Reader and Batteryless Immortal ESL (Electronic Shelf Label) Autonomous Price Changing System helps improve operational efficiency by saving retailers time, money and batteries.
Badger Technologies’ autonomous robots monitor on-shelf product availability, verify prices, and collect data from the retail floor to improve operational efficiencies and shopping experiences.
Pairing Powercast’s batteryless ESLs with Badger Technologies’ autonomous robots now enables the back office to manage real-time electronic updates for the first time, while freeing associates to serve customers instead of changing price tags and eliminating the labor-intensive battery replacement and disposal problems associated with battery-powered ESLs.
Powercast’s immortal ESLs don’t need batteries because the company’s RF-to-direct current (DC) power harvesting technology can harvest enough power from industry-standard RFID readers. In this system, RFID readers installed on the robots send RF power over the air as they roam by the ESLs to Powercast’s receiver chips embedded in the ESLs.
These chips convert the RF to DC power to wirelessly update the ESL’s ePaper displays with new prices. Using LiDAR to detect and safely avoid people, the robots can travel a store 24/7 for a completely autonomous price checking and changing system.
