Lowe’s twins its workers

Home improvement retailer Lowe’s is giving its associates digital twins to better serve customers

Using NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise to visualise and interact with a store’s digital data, Lowe’s is testing digital twins in two US locations. Its ultimate goal is to empower its retail associates to better serve customers, collaborate with one another in new ways and optimise store operations.

“At Lowe’s, we are always looking for ways to reimagine store operations and remove friction for our customers,” said Seemantini Godbole, executive vice president and chief digital and information officer at Lowe’s. “With NVIDIA Omniverse, we’re pulling data together in ways that have never been possible, giving our associates superpowers.”

With its interactive digital twin, Lowe’s is exploring a variety of novel augmented reality use cases, including reconfiguring layouts, restocking support, real-time collaboration and what it calls “X-ray vision.”

Wearing a Magic Leap 2 AR headset, store associates can interact with the digital twin. This AR experience helps an associate compare what a store shelf should look like with what it actually looks like, and ensure it’s stocked with the right products in the right configurations.

AR

And this isn’t just a single-player activity. Store associates on the ground can communicate and collaborate with centralised store planners via AR.

Lastly, a benefit of the digital twin and Magic Leap 2 headset is the ability to explore “X-ray vision.”

Traditionally, a store associate might need to climb a ladder to scan or read small labels on cardboard boxes held in a store’s top stock. With an AR headset and the digital twin, the associate could look up at a partially obscured cardboard box from ground level, and, thanks to computer vision and Lowe’s inventory application programming interfaces, “see” what’s inside via an AR overlay.