Robotics: Grocery Store Robot Might Soon Replace Human Workers

WORLD San Francisco-based company Simbe Robotics has developed an autonomous mobile robot that checks and analyses product availability in-store.

Tally will obviously be able to keep to normal business hours, and sports a charging dock that is reminiscent of that of a Roomba’s, allowing itself to juice up should it run low on battery power in mid-shift. Tally can also catch pricing errors or if items have been misplaced. “Tally has the ability to audit shelves cheaper, more frequently, and significantly faster than existing processes; and with near-perfect accuracy”.

This robot is aimed at addressing the problem of out-of-stock items and empty shelves.

With the robot in operation, a stockboy will no longer have to make a visual inspection by walking down the aisles. The data is then exposed through both an API and front-end application, which can be used to make recommendations to improve store performance.

“When it comes to the retail industry, shopper experience is everything”. “Tally helps retailers address these challenges by providing more precise and timely analysis of the state of in-store merchandise and freeing up staff to focus on customer service”. “Think about the robot that delivers things to hotel rooms or the self-driving auto for that matter”.

Several North American retailers are piloting a new robotic auditing and analytics approach for tracking and managing inventory.

A Silicon Valley start-up has created a grocery store robot to manage inventory more effectively than human workers.