Pathmark Stores, Inc. Taking on ``Bottom of Basket Loss'' With Evolution Robotics' LaneHawk™

Business Wire, July 12, 2005

PASADENA, Calif. -- Evolution Robotics, a leading provider of next-generation robotic solutions and Pathmark Stores, Inc. (Nasdaq:PTMK) announced today that Pathmark is testing Evolution Robotics' LaneHawk(TM), a revolutionary visual scanning solution that helps companies reduce their bottom-of-basket, or BOB, loss.

"Reducing BOB loss is a challenge grocery retailers have tried to address for years, with very mixed results," said Bob Oberosler, Senior Vice President of Operations for Pathmark. "All of the efforts to date have depended on cashiers consistently checking the bottom of customers' carts and manually scanning those items, which just doesn't happen all the time. LaneHawk is the first product we have seen that can actually help ring those items up as part of the transaction."

The key to LaneHawk's innovative technology is its advanced visual pattern recognition (ViPR(TM)) software, which was developed initially for the robotics industry. "With ViPR, LaneHawk is able to identify BOB items without seeing the bar code," says Michael McWilliams, Vice President of Sales of Evolution Robotics' Retail Solutions Group.

"This makes it possible to integrate LaneHawk with a retailer's point of sale system, and include BOB items as part of the transaction. That means BOB items are paid for before they are lost, without relying on cashiers to manually scan every BOB item," adds Jeff Sakaguchi, Vice President and General Manager of Evolution Robotics Retail Solutions Group.

This is especially important to Pathmark, given its focus on customer satisfaction and technology leadership, according to Eileen Scott, CEO of Pathmark. "Our customers demand faster checkout times and greater value. Offering larger sizes and bulk packages is part of delivering this value. We are excited about LaneHawk's ability to not only reduce our BOB loss, but also potentially reduce the number of those items a customer or cashier needs to physically handle and manually scan."

The pilot is being conducted in three select stores, and will run during the summer. "We look forward to working on this important initiative with Pathmark," said Alec Hudnut, CEO of Evolution Robotics. "Our data indicates that BOB loss accounts for 10-20 percent of total store shrink. We appreciate Pathmark's confidence in LaneHawk's ability to significantly reduce this loss, generate very attractive ROI, and potentially transform the customer checkout experience."

About Evolution Robotics

Evolution Robotics, Inc. is based in Pasadena, CA, and develops state-of-the-art technologies in the areas of visual pattern recognition. The company's technologies are used worldwide to develop intelligent products and solutions for commercial and consumer use. The company's flagship technology, ViPR(TM), advanced visual pattern recognition software, is considered the "gold standard" implementation of scale-invariant feature transformation (SIFT) algorithms, and is the key technology behind the LaneHawk(TM) Visual Scanner for Preventing Bottom-of-the-Basket Loss. Evolution Robotics is an operating company of Idealab, a creator and operator of technology businesses (www.evolution.com).

About Pathmark

Pathmark Stores, Inc., based in Carteret, NJ, is a regional supermarket currently operating 142 stores primarily in the New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. For more information, please contact Harvey Gutman at 732-499-4327 or visit www.Pathmark.com.