BJ Santiago – President and CEO of Badger Technologies - discusses with Mike the use of the Badger Shelf scanning robot for measuring OSA and detecting and alerting on in store conditions.

Hello, this is Mike Graen. I'm your host for the on

shelf availability with the Supply Chain Management Research

Council. We had a podcast about a month ago, I think it was

episode number 14, where we actually talk to the leading

shelf scanning robot technology providers. We had Badger

Technologies, we had Brain Technologies, we had Simbe, and

we had Zippedi Robotics. I got a lot of feedback about that about

how helpful that was, for people to understand that, but they

wanted to go a little bit deeper. They wanted to talk a

little bit about how do these robots actually work in store?

And what exactly does it result in for the retailer and the

brand owner. So today, I'm joined by BJ Santiago of the

Badger Corporation and we're going to go a little bit deeper.

So Hello, greetings. This is Mike Graen. I have the pleasure

of spending time with BJ Santiago from the Badger

Corporation. BJ I took some liberties to look at your bio on

LinkedIn and man, you've had a lot of cool opportunities in

your career. A lot of them seem to be like in retail technology,

sales and service. I saw Optio, Lexmark and Intellinetics. Is

that how you said that one, Intellinetics?

Intellinetics. They were a, a records

management organization for government agencies.

Gotcha. Gotcha. And that's led you all the way up to

the point you are now which is the CEO, Chief Executive Officer

of the Badger Corporation. We're going to spend the entire time

talking about what exactly does a badge? What is a badger robot?

How does it work? How does it help retailers and brand owners?

But before you do, I got a couple of setup questions. And

the first one, you probably didn't know this, but you posted

on your LinkedIn profile, a quote by Drucker "If you want

something new, you have to stop doing something old." Pretty

profound. And I'm sure that means something to you. I'd love

to get your perspective on why why is that important to you?

Why would you put it on your LinkedIn profile? And, and what

does it mean to you?

That it's funny, you saw that a lot of

people will just look over that. You know, basically what it's

saying there, Mike, is you've got to, and I'll use Badger as

an example. We had a great meeting the other day. And you

know, we've got some seasoned veterans that are just super

smart. But they've been here a while. And we've got some

younger generational engineers that are super smart. And you

know, they were tasked to figure something out. And the same guys

were trying to figure it out. And they weren't asking for the

younger people's opinion. And I just stopped them. And I said,

Listen, I said, You guys have been doing this a long time

together, and it's the same group trying to figure out very

similar problems. You've got to think out of the box, and you

have to look at other people to get some insight and answers.

And really, you know, if you keep on using the same knowledge

to do the same things over and over again, or face the same

challenges, you're never going to get it to the next level. So

I said, you know, trust on the younger generation, we have to

work, trust on other experts, trust on other people to help

you grow as a person professionally, and, and

personally. And really, that's what that means. It just means

that, you know, if you're expecting to do the same old

things all the time and wait for new results, it's just not going

to happen.

The whole definition of insanity thing, right? Well,

this, that wisdom probably goes way beyond just the idea of

shelf scanning robots. But that's, that's very profound. I

think. I think we all sort of get in the same same treadmill

and get on the same thing and expect different results. And I

think that's really good wisdom so.

Thanks. Thanks for noticing that.

Yeah

If we stop now we're great Mike.

Now we gotta keep going. I got some more questions

for you. So So one of the things that I always like to ask our

podcast guests because at the end of the day, I'm spending a

lot of my focus basically my entire focus on on shelf

availability. Making sure products are in stock, making

sure it's available for both the customer who shops in a brick

and mortar store as well as they buy it online, and they have a

picking service pick the product for them. But before we get into

the solutions that address that, one of the things I like to ask

is, we're all also customers, we go buy groceries, we buy product

at mass merchandisers and the club channel and the dollar

channel and the food drug channel and you know, all that

kind of stuff. So before we get into this particular topic, I'm

interested in any potential stories you have about when you

as a customer, wanted to get something, went into a local

store. You don't have to name the store. We don't need to

throw the store under the bus but just your experience as a

customer or a shopper and how that particular experience made

you feel.

Well, it's funny, you must be chatting with

my wife because they local store owner of one of the grocery

stores we go to

Oh, ok.

Specifically, I love Progresso white clam

sauce. So I give them a little shout out.

Cool

Every time I go into the store, I looked at

their mobile app, and I'd be like, okay, the product is not

there. Okay, I it's never here. It's never in stock where it is.

And I'd walk around to a few other aisles guessing and it

would be over there. And then when my wife or daughter order

it online, we'd get the alternative. So it was driving

me crazy. So one day, I went into the store and I said, Can I

speak to the day manager and we met each other and tell them

what we did. And we had a few laughs I told him what Badger

did. But now believe it or not that Progresso clam sauce is

always in the right place.

So we don't need retail technology, we just need every

single customer to stop somebody in the store and go, Why is it

so hard to keep this in stock? I really liked this product. I

don't think that's sustainable and systemic. But it's pretty

interesting. All right. Well, you and I had an opportunity a

few weeks back, I guess it's been about a month or so now to

spend some time on the shelf scanning robot. And we had some

other folks on the line as well. But I got some feedback from

folks who watched that podcast, they wanted to go a little bit

deeper on a couple of the topics. So one of the things

that I did is basically kind of think about okay, what exactly

is is it? So let's start with the basics. Exactly what is

Badger Technologies? And specifically, what in the world

have you created with a shelf scanning robot? Tell me about

that.

Sure, sure. Yeah, simply put, Badger is a global autonomous

solutions company. And autonomous means that we use,

you know, driverless type technologies and robotics,

combined with artificial intelligence and machine

learning, which we can then convert data and metrics and

insights into not only the retailers we serve, but also

adjacent marketplaces. And what we try to do at Badger is be

device inclusive, because we understand will lead with our

robotics, but we also have to deal with other companies

technologies, such as like fixed cameras and things. So we try to

be device inclusive, which, using our technologies, and

maybe some existing technologies, we help our

customers lower their operational costs and ultimately

increase their profits by getting more product on the

shelf more frequently, which then ultimately, lets them drive

their customer experience to higher levels, because, you

know, the customers are there to find what they like and by using

the Badger Technologies as an inventory system to alert them

on, when things are not in the store. It enhances the the end

users customer experience. And we do this through a hybrid

model we bring to market which is the robots and also we have a

best in class analytic platform for the markets that we serve.

So let's go all the way back to the first question that I asked

you. So you as a customer got frustrated because that pasta

sauce was not in the store. If that particular store would have

had a Badger shelf scanning robot, how would they have

gotten alerted that there was an issue?

They would have gotten alerted through what we typically what

our partners do is they'll do several scheduled scans with the

robot a day, they typically start with a very early morning

scan when the store is relatively in pristine

conditions from the night before of filling the shelves. So they

were on an early morning scan, they would have gone down that

spaghetti pasta aisle, evaluating the products on the

shelves, the price tags, and so forth. And it would have noticed

that that particular brand of spaghetti sauce was was not on

the shelf. If there was a gap or it wasn't in the right location,

the robot would take an image of that, it would identify that, it

would read the price tag and the barcode looking for the item and

the SKU. And knowing that that product was not there, it would

then take that information load it onto our portal site which

the store operation can use or it would send the information

via API to the store system and just alert them in the way that

both parties want to want to communicate that that item is

currently out of stock. As soon as the robot is done with that

aisle run 15 to 20 minutes after it's completed and aisle, it's

updating the store operations with this this kind of

information which then allows the store to one know that the

the issue the item is not on shelf but also if they wish to

they can replenish it much sooner. Make sure the products

there for the afternoon rush, or the evening rush and so on.

Wow, so you're saying it's actually going down

every single aisle, looking at every single shelf tag, and

determining if there's a shelf tag there, and there's no

product there, that's an out. They're also looking at that

shelf tag, and if a product is there, but it doesn't look like

the product that it should be, it's a incorrect product. And

it's also catching pricing and discrepancies. Now, there's

1000s of items in an aisle, right? So you're you're saying

that this thing is autonomously doing this, and then providing

that information real time back to the store, relatively real

time within 15 minutes, so they can take action on what it

found.

That's correct. That's correct. Where

the robot has an advantage over a human. And we've done several

audits with, you know, the customers that have chosen our

solution is, you know, you'll hear the term spread and plug.

And that's when items are across the shelf, and they may be over

the price tag. And it looks very neat. And it looks like all the

items are there. The robot can also detect, as you said, the

incorrect product so it can go down. And if an associate has

put all, you know, Coke over Pepsi's price tag, but it looks

very neat. The associate scanning the inventory on a scan

gun typically walks right past that. And as soon as

everything's in stock, the robot can identify that like from what

you just said, by reading the price tag and understanding the

visual of it. And it still reports that that those items

aren't there. So we've had, you know, the robot go down a few

aisles and then a person from that same store go down the same

aisles right after the robot, and it blew your mind on how

much more accurate the robots are just from the humans.

Yeah, I would imagine that scanning a shelf

and scanning a product and scanning the next label scan,

that would get pretty monotonous after a while, I would think

that would get very, as matter of fact, if you know that you're

in the aisle doing that, I would imagine if you're in the middle

of doing it, you're probably going to get interrupted by a

customer, which is a good thing. You solve their problem. You go

go back and go. I forgot where I was.

Yeah, it's just human nature. It's hard to

do and hard to keep that focus for that long of time. And

there's just so much, you know, SKUs and information on those

shelves.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Well we're seeing, we're seeing robots anywhere,

everywhere. And adoption seems to be expanding on this. I mean,

I think we probably already know the answer this question. But

why do you see adoption expanding as rapidly as it is?

Mike, there's several reasons for, you know,

the adoption taking place. It's not only the technology. But

first and foremost, right now, the adoption rate is happening

Wow. Well, that sort of answers another question that I'm sure

faster than usual, due to the lack of labor. There's a big

labor shortage and the retail environment today is SharePoint,

that they can't get people to come to work or having a

difficulty to do. So is one of the major problems why the

adoption rate has grown so quickly over the last few years

post COVID, or during this pandemic stage. But also, it's

it there's a great ROI associated with it as companies

look at the hourly wages going up to $15 an hour in many of the

states around the country. Some of these companies are

predicated on an eight to $12 an hour model. And then so they're,

they're struggling with how can we reduce costs, but yet

maintain the on shelf conditions in the store and the robot

becomes a very strong economic reason to do so. And so there's

just a lot of good reasons. And what we're also seeing is, is

the smaller, independent grocer, so the tier one groceries, you

would think automatically would go to robotics, they could they

can afford it. But the independent grocer, the family

grocer from 10 locations up to maybe 100 locations. Over the

last two years, they've adopted the robot technology. And we

that that people have asked me before, which is, isn't this

have several new customers that have sub 50 locations that are

aren't these robots taking away jobs from people? And to a

using our robots today. It's just more economically sound for

them to do so.

certain degree, the answer is they're taking away tasks from

people. Yes. Not taking away jobs. Last time I checked, your

robot doesn't have an arm. So even if it can't necessarily

respond to an alert and put a product back on the shelf, but

just the mundane process of sitting there scanning, scanning

the shelves and generating alerts, which is fairly

monotonous, and it's probably not the most exciting job in the

world. I'd rather just respond to the alerts because that's

something I feel I can add value to. So that's the answer that I

would probably give for folks like that. So go ahead.

No, no, I was just gonna say yeah, and believe it or not, you

know, the feedback we're getting from instore associates, when

they're Robots in the store has actually been very positive.

These are, like you said, mundane, tedious tasks they

don't like to do. They're very happy. And then, you know, we'll

get customers that have asked me when I've been in stores, you

know, what was the robot taking a job? And quite frankly, to

your point, I'll say, no, they're not. And what they're

doing is allowing you to have your, your favorite product on

the shelf more frequently. And this one gentleman said to me,

so you're telling me that this robot will help me get the

Fritos on the shelf more frequently? And I said, Yeah.

And he said, Okay, I'm all for it then.

That's awesome. Well, I want to transition a

little bit into the future, because obviously, it's making a

meaningful difference and the retailers that are using it. But

I also feel like these particular robots are

multipurpose robots. They're not just shelf scanning, they're

doing other things, or potentially are going to be

doing other things as well. So you actually invest if you're a

retailer in one device that can perform many functions for you.

So what do you think that the future of the shelf scanning

robots in the stores is going to look like?

I think the future is extremely strong. I

think that as the technology matures, the digital imaging

technology matures, we're gonna see just a higher growth path

for the robots. We do it all in one, three in one robot ourself,

our robots not only do the shell scanning and inventory control

for the things we talked about, but we also that same robot in

between its tasks of evaluating shelf conditions is going around

the store, checking for hazards, and it's a hazard mitigation

application called inspect. And that same robot will go around

the store and look for slip and fall debris to help the safety

of the store. And when it finds anything that might be

dangerous, it'll post up next to it like a safety cone. And then

alerts through a task management system over the PA system that

there's a debris on the floor that needs to be attended to. So

that's another application along with the inventory. And that

same robot also has a security feature to it, where it can do

augmentation for security walks in the back of the store. So the

distribution centers, check in on refrigeration doors, and

pallets and things like that, that typically, some of the

larger grocers have very strict security path walks that they

that they do in the back of the store, this is just another

thing the robot can do to help them to allow the associates to

free up their time to help customers do more in or you

know, a customer facing activities.

So in the middle of the night, while people are

stocking the store, the robot can go around to all of the exit

doors that can actually detect whether those exit doors are

open or closed or locked, or is there somebody behind the scenes

kind of looking at that? How does that work?

Yeah, the robot will. It's it's got

artificial intelligence and machine learning where it

understand what a door or a fire extinguisher defibrillator or

anything looks like. And that will report if that door is open

or that windows open or something's not right. And then

we also have a second tier human verification that the robot can

actually say, Hey, I'm confused. And it'll be sent to a human for

a second tier verification. So we make sure we cover both

things when the robot from an artificial intelligence may be

confused on what it sees. We have a secondary part in there

where a human can look at it. So we made sure that the robot is

completely doing what it needs to do.

Wow, that's awesome. So just practically, if I'm a

customer, and I see a robot in the store, just I've gotten this

question while I've been in the store, you sort of go how does

it navigate and should I watch out so it doesn't run into me?

And all those other kinds of things. How does how does it

navigate a store, first off. And secondly, how does it handle

obstructions of things that were supposed are not supposed to be

there or are supposed to be there to make sure it doesn't

have any kind of any kind of accidents?

Sure, a great question. So let me take a step

back on that. Your first question and just talk about how

we set a store up for the navigation. When a store

partners with us and identifies a location or multiple locations

what we do is we we take a field technician and we send him into

a store with a lidar navigation system. And LIDAR stands for the

light detection and ranging. It's a it's a navigation system

that uses a laser scanner and GPS all in one. And that

technician takes a handheld LIDAR device, puts it on a

tripod in the shopping cart and walks around the store for about

an hour and captures literally in about an 85,000 square foot

store a complete 3d map of every inch of the store. We then clean

that map up, and program it back into the robot in a 2d fashion,

two dimensional, and that's how the robot understands and learns

in the first phase of the the navigation that it has to follow

within a store. Then we go, and once that's done, we do what we

call a base scan and we test the navigation of the store, we also

test what the robot seeing on the shelves and all that

together, is called the base scan. And we do that for one or

two days. And then that enables and test the robot that the

navigation is ready. So that's what we do to set the store up,

but it's a very short process and very non intrusive. We then

from a navigation perspective, the robot can tell through both

hardware sensors and software sensors, it can detect a solid

object versus a human. And it also has safety cone sensors and

imaging cameras, that it can detect a human up to nine feet

away, or an object up to nine feet away, and know where it's

supposed to go or stay away from. So if it sees a human,

nine feet away, it alerts itself and says, okay, there's somebody

there. And if a human gets within three feet of the robot,

it completely stops from a safety perspective, and then

allows the person to, you know, do its thing, and then get out

of the way once that person gets out of the way the robot

continues on its path, or what we call a play. And the robot is

programmed with several plays, to conduct several tasks

throughout the day, different times a day, and it uses this

whole LIDAR navigation to do so.

Wow. Fascinating. So so the practical reality is a

robots never going to run into something or somebody.

No, not yet. We've had, we've had, knock on

wood, we've done over in our current client base, we've done

over 1.3 million miles on the robot, and the robot has never

run into anyone yet. So we can knock on wood on that. So it's a

great technology and very, very safe.

Awesome. Terrific. Terrific. So tell me about how

it's being monitored. Is somebody watching this thing as

it's navigating through a store, or is it just kind of

autonomously doing that and sending data back?

Yeah, so we have a it's, it's monitored by

Badger 24/7, worldwide. So give you give you a range of

magnitude Mike, we have customers in Australia, New

Zealand, Portugal, France, Israel, and many states here in

the US. So this, all those robots are monitored out of one

system called Skybox. It's a fleet management system in our

headquarters, it monitors the robot 24/7. And it also monitors

each robots heartbeat every 10 seconds. And the way the rogram,

a robot is programmed through its software, that fleet

management system, not only can monitor the robot's movements,

but it can diagnose it, and over 90% of the issues in the field

can be corrected, right from the skybox. And we have employees

that work around the clock, just monitoring if there's any

alerts, if something's wrong with the robot, they'll evaluate

it on the screen. And then the robot is corrected, but 90% of

it can be done remotely worldwide to get the robot back

on track if there's ever an issue.

Wow, awesome. All right. So real practically, I am

an employee in a store that I'm seeing a Badger robot, I get

those alerts, how do I get those alerts? And how do I actually

execute slash fix those alerts inside the store?

Yes, so the alerting can be done several

different ways. All of our clients have the ability to use

the Badger portal. And within that portal, we will show each

aisle that the robot runs. And they'll have a visual of any

discrepancies it sees from out of stock, wrong pricing, wrong

item. And what that portal can do is it can allow you to

download a task list if you wish, or that task list can also

be alerted through an API to a grocers primary system if they

choose to do that. And then they want to run the reports out of

their own task management system and dispatch associates. But the

alerts can be done different way they can be done via the portal

system, an alert can be sent to a text of one of the workers

phones SMS. There's different ways it can be over the PA

system. So we work it out with the client based on their

operational needs and the way they run their processes for

those alerts to get to their smart devices or some kind of

system in a way that they need today.

Okay, awesome. Well is a certainly the people who

benefit are the retailers because they get to have

insights about whether they have product on the shelf for the

customers and not the other obvious, you know, people that

get benefit are the customers because this stuff is there on

the shelf much more frequently than if it's sitting in the

backroom someplace, who else benefits from this particular

Oh, wow. Well, you know, we've been asked

technology?

beyond the retail. But in the same ecosystem, the CPGs, now

known as fmcgs, are very interested in this kind of

information, because they too want to know information on

their shelf conditions. So we've had interest from those kinds of

organizations to get the same information a retailer does to

make sure their items are in the right place and are in stock.

There's also other data aggregator organizations out

there, like, you know, IRIs, and Nielsens, and they're people

that could benefit from more frequent information today.

Those kind of organizations that do predictive and prescriptive

analytics, do it off of system driven information, point of

sale data that might be driven at the end of the day, allowing

them to make judgment on on on things in the future. They can

get more information from a robotics company like Badger

more frequently throughout the day, which they wouldn't get

today. There's also, you know, different, larger CPGs, like the

Pepsis and Cokes that have logistics and DSD type of

organizations that are working in the store two or three times

a day, they can use this kind of technology. So it's really

addressing the whole ecosystem of people and suppliers that are

not only delivering stuff to the store first, but both of them

are very concerned and making sure that the shelf conditions

have the right products at the right time.

Wow. Fantastic BJ. So one of my favorite questions,

which I always ask at the end of these podcasts are what question

didn't, did I not ask that I should have? What's kind of on

your mind and what you've heard from customers or retailers or

or anybody that I should have asked, but I didn't? And then of

course, what's the answer to that question?

I'll start off with a whimsical one. You know,

there will be robots that put stuff back on the shelves today,

we don't do that. But I I've seen some technologies that

robots stocking shelves. But I think all in all, there's,

there's beyond just price tags and things of that nature.

There's also different types of tags and stores that need to be

analyzed such as RFID tags, and a lot of the big grocers with

the apparel part of their business need that, that that

stuff evaluated as well. Badger brings that offering to the

table too. So we we we are testing right now and getting

ready to release our first pilot program with the RFID

capabilities. So

Congratulations. That's great.

I mentioned a little bit, Mike about our, you know, hazard

detection and the security aspect of it. So I think you've

covered almost everything. There's not really much that you

didn't ask, but you know, robots are here to stay. I believe that

they're going to be a very important part. But again, at

the end of the day, it's about the customer and having a great

experience.

Great, great. Well, if people want to find out more

information about badger and some of the things that you can

do, who would you like me to have them contact?

You can have them contact me, I'm very

personable person they can contact myself. At

william_santiago@jabil.com. People might say what's the

Jabil, Jabil is our parent company out of St. Petersburg,

Florida. They're a $30 billion contract manufacturer. They have

a big retail practice, but Badger is a product company

under them, or Mark Shake. That's mark_shake@jabil.com.

Also, you could go to our website, Badgers-technologies

and.com And then do a web inquiry there. And we'll get

back to you within you know, 24 hours, as well. So

Awesome. Well, BJ, I want to thank you on behalf of

our audience. We did have a number of folks after the last

one on shelf scanning robots reach out. These are some of the

questions that they provided. And I thought you did a great

job of answering them. Thank you so much for all you're doing for

the retail tech world and helping us figure out how to get

more product on the shelf for our customers and being a very,

very important part of that.

Alright, well, thanks, Mike. Thanks for having

us. And it's always a pleasure talking with you. Appreciate it.

Alright, take care.

Thanks, buddy.

I hope you enjoyed that podcast regarding the shelf

scanning robot from Badger Technologies. Those particular

robots are working in a lot of different retail stores, a lot

of different formats, and they continue to drive on shelf

availability, alerting and reporting, which is definitely

helping out the grocery industry. Join us next time as

we welcome Jeff Clapper who is the CEO of Eighth and Walton.

Jeff will be coming and talking about some of their on shelf

availability capability that his company is providing, and how

it's helping retailers specifically work with Walmart

on better understanding where their products are on the shelf

and how to get more of them there. Thanks.