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Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores
- Isamu 9y ago> the robots are 50% more efficient than a human doing the same task. They can also scan shelves three times more quickly and are a lot more accurate. Human employees can only scan shelves about twice a week. Personally, I want to see up-to-date retail stock mapping (that I can search) Walmart is testing a robot from Bossa Nova (Pittsburgh and SF) http://www.bossanova.com/ http://www.bossanova.com/ https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bossa-nova-robotics-inc/timeline/timeline https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bossa-nova-robotics-...
- comboy 9y agoWhy does it have to be a robot riding around? Couldn't the same thing be done from a camera on the ceiling?
- Operyl 9y agoBecause robots look cooler. Also, I imagine it’s probably doing some stuff with depth perception crap and what have you.
- arkitaip 9y agoBut then you would have to spend lots of money of redesigning ceilings, having regular maintenance work done, etc.
- markkanof 9y agoIt would probably mean that the camera would either have to hang down pretty low in the isles or the isles would need to be super wide so that the camera could get a good view angle of the entire shelf, including bottom rows. But sure I suppose they probably could have something that rides around on a track on the ceiling and raises and lowers to get into position in each isle.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoLike Oto (sp?) from Wall-E?
- maxerickson 9y agoThey already do it at POS. Lots of store websites have a feature where you select a location and it tells you whether a product is in stock or not (and often how much is in stock).
- derefr 9y agoThe more interesting question to me is why the robot has to go scan the shelves at the time you ask, when there could just be one (purpose-built) robot that walks the shelves once per night and builds up a model of the entire store that gets used by the other robots for the rest of the day. The hospitality robots wouldn’t even need to be able to see the shelves; they’d just need to be able to guide themselves to the right coordinates in the store and say “it should be right in front of me.”
- heartbreak 9y agoWhat hospitality robots are you talking about? Does Walmart have hospitality robots? I only saw the stock scanning robot in the article.
- hk__2 9y ago> Personally, I want to see up-to-date retail stock mapping (that I can search) Isn’t something Walmart doesn’t want you to have? Having a mapping means being more efficient when shopping in the store, which means less time in it and so less opportunities to buy things.
- fossuser 9y agoThis reminds me of the argument some (now dead) portal page/search engine company made to Larry Page when Larry and Sergey showed off their page rank algorithm. It was basically something like the following: "This is no good - if the search results are too good then people won't stay on our page long enough to see the ads" This is basically what triggered them to start their own company instead of licensing the tech (I'm remembering most of this from In The Plex which I read a while back). Basically it's stupid not to make the core thing better - especially in the case where Walmart's real competition is Amazon.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoMarket pressures always lead to quality decay over time. Even with Google - it started with lightweight, quality, bullshit-free search. Look at it now.
- unabridged 9y agoEspecially Google Maps, I'm waiting for a competitor to blow it out of the water. Satellite images are relatively cheap, you could have a map that shows a daily updated image of every street, and show timelapses. But their streetview would be very tough to displace.
- raisedbyninjas 9y agoTheir mobile maps are bloated and their web maps have been better, but I'm not sure how Google or anybody else can get cheap daily streetview imagery. I've been waiting for somebody to partner with the postal service and slap cameras on every truck.
- ikeboy 9y agoBrickseek?
- Bromskloss 9y ago> http://www.bossanova.com/ http://www.bossanova.com/ Oh no, it's _ugly_!
- prawn 9y agoI don't think it's that bad. It's meant to be practical and inoffensive rather than especially stylish.
- Bromskloss 9y agoIf, at least, it could have been offensive!
- woobar 9y ago> Personally, I want to see up-to-date retail stock mapping (that I can search) Just got from Lowes and they do it on the web and in their app. Search for an item, and if it is in stock it will show you its location on the store map. OTOH, every Walmart I've visted is unable to keep their shelves full. [1] How hard it is to keep something non-perishable (like deodorant) in stock? Somehow Target figured that out. [1] https://consumerist.com/2013/04/05/walmart-employees-tell-consumerist-about-all-those-empty-shelves/ https://consumerist.com/2013/04/05/walmart-employees-tell-co...
- monkmartinez 9y agoAnecdote time! I bought a water softener at HomeDepot about three weeks ago. Initially went to my local Lowes where I had checked if one was in stock and at the store. Yes and Yes. Get to Lowes and there is no water softener, as the website indicated. Lowe's employee checked the back as well, wasn't there. There are many problems with humans doing this "inventory business" at $10 an hour or so. The professional counts that happen once or so a year by outside agencies wouldn't be necessary otherwise. To be fair, I've had issues at Home Depot as well... lots of; "The computer says there are 2 in stock... I have no idea where they are."
- woobar 9y agoYeah, it isn't perfect. Sometimes I see more variety on the shelves then was reported by the search results. But my primary use case is the store map. It is so easy to get lost in Lowes/Home Depot.
- derefr 9y agoYou’d think it’d be a simple matter of 1. automatically decrementing a counter when the item is scanned at checkout; and 2. manually decrementing the same counter when you throw things out for breakage or expiry (i.e. pretend the dumpster is a customer and ring up its purchases.) That would just leave theft, which is usually predictable with ML (this being part of what loyalty cards are for), and doesn’t happen at all for most low/medium-ticket items.
- sib 9y ago>> Personally, I want to see up-to-date retail stock mapping (that I can search) If you search an item in the Walmart mobile app, it will tell you the aisle that the item is in, in the store you are in (there is an automatically-entered "store mode" that is driven by location detection.) They have all the data across 5,000 stores and >100,000 SKUs. The robot helps ensure that customers haven't moved items from where they are supposed to be.
- Overtonwindow 9y agoWhat will the People of Walmart make of this? Personally, I think store robots like these don't really help much. A novelty at first, I think the image of Walmart as a cheapskate on all things human, will give the robot a negative reputation.
- 659087 9y ago> What will the People of Walmart make of this? That depends entirely upon whether or not the robots can help deliver their "I thought it was just gas" bathroom babies.
- bamboozled 9y agoSome of them will probably be hired to walk around and greet customers, I noticed that on my last visit to Australia and NZ. A lot of major chains down there, since implementing self-service checkouts etc, now just employ people to be friendly and give the brand and store some kind of face. It was interesting. Kind of like hiring some warmth and personality for an otherwise cold and desolate warehouse.
- adventured 9y agoWalmart re-instituted its greeter system [1] in part for that reason. They're using a lot of elderly workers for it. Walmart found that just having greeters out front reduced their theft numbers meaningfully. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/05/04/walmart-brings-back-greeters-to-improve-service-and-fight-theft/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/04/walmart-brings-back-greeters-t...
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- anigbrowl 9y agoI wonder what their reaction will be when people start attaching stickers to them
- adventured 9y agoWalmart has eyes in the sky covering every part of the consumer area of the building. I imagine they'll regard it as property vandalism (stickers being the least of what people will do to them).
- phkahler 9y agoDropping gum in front of their wheels...
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoYou guys think there will be a backlash to this? Some sort of modern luddite movement? Whenever I shop I refuse to use the self-checkout, you think that sort of thing might spread?
- irl_zebra 9y agoWhy do you refuse to use the self checkout?
- zajd 9y agoI'm going to guess because of how symbolic it is regarding our society's relation to labor.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoPeople need those jobs so I want them to exist.
- michaelkeenan 9y agoThe 18th century version of this was not using an umbrella to preserve demand for coach drivers: "Over the years, Hanway and his umbrella fell victim to all sorts of abuse from Brits he passed on the sidewalk. The most pernicious abuse came from an unlikely source: coach drivers. In England at the time, hansom cabs (two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriages) and sedan chairs were the primary modes of transportation. Business boomed especially on rainy days, as both hansom cabs and sedan chairs came equipped with small canopies that kept passengers dry. When it rained, Londoners flocked to these coaches, so Hanway’s umbrella represented a threat to business. Fearing an interruption in their personal incomes, many hansom cab drivers and sedan chair carriers grew violent toward Hanway. According to the British history magazine Look and Learn, when they saw him walking by, they often “pelted him with rubbish.” On one occasion, a hansom cab driver even tried to run Hanway over with his coach. Hanway reacted by using his umbrella to “give the man a good thrashing.”" - https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-public-shaming-of-englands-first-umbrella-user https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-public-shaming-of-...
- UnoriginalGuy 9y agoI wonder if these robots will suffer from the "roomba dog mess" problem. Meaning if a jar of something gets dropped in the aisle, will the robot happily drive through it and then leave tracks of it throughout the store? I'd also be interested in learning about the false positives. For example a product get turned around on the shelf or returned askew does that trigger an alert? And is that a good or bad thing? I guess the proof will be in the pudding. If these are still in use two or three years from now then we know they were a success. From a personal perspective I'd love these to improve me locate products within a store. Many stores still fail to tell you which shelf a product is on on their mobile app, and the few that day don't give you a map of the store showing you the literal location of it. I'd love to have a "Google Maps"-like experience with locating an item.
- rapind 9y agoBut can they do the cheer?
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- alexS 9y agoLets start an open robot cooperative where each co adopting robots to replace human labor donates to high tech or other education. This idea is open source so take it and run with it :)
- timthelion 9y agoIt seems interesting to me, that computers seem to be taking on managerial roles and humans are left with manual labor. The robot knows how to tell a human to fix a problem but doesn't know how to restock the shelves itself. Similarly, in warehouses, computers tell humans what to do, and the human's job is basically just to grab things. In the end, the robot is already higher on the ladder than the humans.
- panopticon 9y agoReminds me of this story: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm I always thought it was amusing when people said it would replace burger flippers and the like. Why? They're cheap, and that's relatively expensive/difficult to automate. The slightly higher paid manager though? Ripe for automation.
- timthelion 9y ago"The girls liked it because Manna didn't hit on them either." Interesting story. I'll be sure to read it.
- ryuker16 9y agoSame here....I suspect it's middle and lower managers that will be first to be obliterated. Cashiers don't simple run the register, they do other stuff. Janitors fix stuff and carry heavy boxes, etc. Managers and supervisors? Overpaid if they're doing the above or doing something can be automated.
- gowld 9y ago> They're cheap, and that's relatively expensive/difficult to automate. that's a weird thing to say, because burger flippers ARE automated -- 99% of the work of making a McDonald's burger is already automated, only the remaining hard-to-automate 1% is left for the humans.
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- devon_m 9y agoand the race is on to squat on https://www.robotsofwalmart.com https://www.robotsofwalmart.com
- practicalcat 9y agostill available
- Animats 9y agoI went to a presentation in SF about three years ago where someone was demoing an inventory robot like that. Same company?
- iandanforth 9y agoEither them or tally (http://www.simberobotics.com/ http://www.simberobotics.com/)
- Animats 9y agoIt was Tally. Did they ever ship? The web site has nothing but a promotional video and press releases.
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- forapurpose 9y agoI wonder why they settled on putting the cameras in robots that are on the floor. Why not use cameras attached to the ceiling? If the cameras need to move to get a good angle, they could move up and down the aisle on tracks or Walmart could simply install more cameras. If the ceiling is a bad angle, they could put them on the floor under the shelving, or on top of the shelves, or in several other places. None of those solutions need navigation, their presences is more persistent, and the persistent visual could be used for other purposes: 'Are we out of produce bags? Check camera 5b.' 'What is on the floor in aisle 8?'
- criddell 9y agoThe Walmart nearest me moves aisles around periodically. Aisle 8 this week has halloween costumes, but two weeks from now aisle 8 will be gone and a large open area will be created for plastic Christmas trees.
- ryuker16 9y agoThey move those shelves and aisles around and every wal-mart I've seen has 50 ft ceilings.
- pwinnski 9y agoFlexibility. Everything you're describing has more limitations than putting a mobile robot on the floor, and the robots require no additional accommodations in store design.
- PatientTrades 9y agoWalmarts are already overcrowded as it is. Adding robots is going to clog the aisles even more. It could still work I guess
- rocketier 9y agoIt is implied in the article, yes, but i dont see a reason why these robots shoudl not operate at closing hours or if it is a 24/7 then at a time when the number of visitors is lowest, say 3 or 4 am.
- phkahler 9y agoWorked on an automatic lawn mower. They wanted to sell them (in part) to golf courses, where they could do the mowing at night.
- kristofferR 9y agoJudging from the pictures they'll still use paper price labels. Why? It seems extremely arcane to still use paper price labels in 2017, especially for stores as big and centrally run as Walmart. With digital price labels you can update prices centrally across the whole country within seconds, and it costs basically nothing to implement too, when the labor cost of manually updating paper price labels are factored in.
- duderific 9y ago> and it costs basically nothing to implement too. I find that hard to believe, given the scale of Walmart's operations - they have close to 5000 stores, and who knows how much technical debt they have in their stocking/inventory systems.
- kristofferR 9y agoI clarified that I meant with labor taken into account. I don't understand the technical debt argument though - if a robot can scan prices to check that they are correct, a display should be able to display the price without any issue. The prices are obviously accedible in a database.
- tradersam 9y agoConsidering the fact that Walmart's last FY earnings were something to the tune of $124.62B,[1] regardless of technical debt or other factors I don't think spending less than 1% of that to do a (probably) much needed upgrade is a hard sell to anyone rational. [1]: https://amigobulls.com/stocks/WMT/income-statement/annual https://amigobulls.com/stocks/WMT/income-statement/annual
- phyzome 9y ago> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers. ...which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots taking our jobs" angle here. If they consider the current level at which employees help customers in the aisles sufficient, then they'll be cutting jobs to match that level rather than "freeing up" employees to do more of it.
- JSONwebtoken 9y agoFor the foreseable future, robots and chatbots will be poorer UX than speaking to a human. Since it's not adding value to their product it's obviously being done for cost cutting and scale reasons.
- jdietrich 9y agoI rarely get useful assistance in large chain stores. Asking "where is the pesto?" usually gets an answer like "I dunno, somewhere in aisle 7 maybe" with an indifferent shrug. I'd happily make three attempts at using a clunky voice interface if I got the answer "Aisle 7, bay 11, shelves 3 and 4. We have 18 different kinds of pesto currently in stock. Would you like me to take you there?" It almost seems too obvious to say, but computers have different strengths and weaknesses to humans. There are also social factors involved that may be advantageous to machines. Self-checkout machines offer an objectively worse experience most of the time, but a lot of shoppers prefer them. Some customers don't want to interact with a human cashier. Some will be buying embarrassing items and prefer the apparent anonymity of self-checkout. There's also a subtlety in how the self-checkout machines are arranged - because there's usually a common queue for several machines, customers don't feel pressured to finish their transaction quickly. Shoppers may prefer being assisted by a robot for a variety of reasons, even if the robot isn't quite as good as the average human worker.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI already choose grocery stores with ample self checkout, which is so much better to me than waiting in line then interacting with a clerk. I for one welcome our robot service providers.
- goodroot 9y ago> The robots are much more efficient than a human at the task of scanning store shelves. Oh, my. This sentence gave me a real chuckle. But, then, I reflected. We're in for some interesting times. If the heuristic is whether not a robot is "more efficient" than a human then human's are going to be in short demand.
- losteverything 9y agoDoug Mcmillon said Wal-Mart reached total maximum employment (sry cant find quote) as in no net increase in associates. He also points out when a "job goes away." often referring to improved convenience for the customer. (i.e. pick up towers) Robots will always be experimented with..
- noonespecial 9y agoAs cheap as cameras are these days, it would almost seem more cost effective and reliable to just put a camera every few feet on the opposite shelf.
- blt 9y agoSure, but that doesn't help you get closer to a fully automated customer service bot. Probably this is just an initial step, the simplest thing that can still be useful, while gathering data and building expertise in the development team.
- kin 9y agoThey'll probably be more effective to be honest. Anecdotally, I've encountered nothing but incompetence when it comes to getting help from Walmart store employees. When asked where I can find something their response is usually "somewhere in that area" while pointing broadly.
- DKnoll 9y agoYou get what you pay for.
- billmalarky 9y agoThere's an old saying, "pay peanuts, get monkeys." This isn't an attack on Walmart employees. Humans deserve higher compensation for their complete effort than Walmart is willing to pay. If someone is giving something their all, they deserve at least a living wage.
- maxpert 9y agoSomebody ask Trump to build a wall and deport these robots! They are taking our jobs :P
- Mizza 9y agoSerious question - why didn't they make it blue?
- ilaksh 9y agoMade by a different company.
- baron816 9y agoI wonder how many more jobs you would restore by taking away the original retail robot: the cash register. If you just made employees record all sales by hand in a ledger, companies like Walmart would have to hire thousands or millions more people to check out customers. Think of all those beautiful jobs! That would surely make America great again.
- QuadrupleA 9y agoYou jest, but I actually wonder sometimes if this type of thing would be better for society. The dream of automation and technology was always to "let the machines do the work so we're free to enjoy life and pursue our dreams" but in a capitalist economy it ends up benefiting the owners of the machines primarily, like Walmart and Amazon, not necessarily society at large (though obviously they enable people to buy things cheaper and thus improve quality of life too, at least if people still have some source of income to afford it). I'd like to think anybody out of a job can just be smart and entrepreneurial and create some other new value people are willing to pay for, but I'm not sure everyone's cut out for that, or how much interest markets have for most of that kind of stuff. Many more small business fail than succeed. Maybe keeping some dumb, honest jobs around would help keep the balance.
- joe5150 9y agothe answer of course is "less capitalism" not "more drudgery"
- mrfusion 9y agoWHy not also let them answer questions from customers?
- grzm 9y agoMaybe some future version. Baby steps.
- gwatch 9y agoShouldn't we increase minimum wage again?! Fun to read all the panic and denial of leftists on this topic. Raise minimum wage and you speed up automation and throw out poor people from their jobs. One has to be brainwashed to argue that mandating higher wages does not force a company to adopt automation sooner. Walmart is doing the correct thing. Leftist policies are destroying jobs for poor people and forcing them to become welfare dependents. Good job socialists -- keep the denial going.
- nunez 9y ago> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers. If you’ve ever been to a Walmart at 2am, you know that this isn’t true. A lot of people will lose jobs over this.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 9y agoThat is sooner than expected.
- agitator 9y agoThat's a pretty ugly robot no? Looks like it's built to follow old people around: "Are you sure you don't want me to check your blood pressure?!"
- notatoad 9y agoThe immediate take away i get from this is that it really isn't about taking over human jobs. humans don't do this job nearly as frequently as the robots would do it, because in a standard retail environment like wal-mart, it doesn't really matter all that much if the reported in-stock quantity is slightly off for an item. that is to say, it matters, but not so much that the big-box retail environments i've worked in would dedicate more than one full-time staff to do this. if the robot is working 24hrs, it's doing the hours of three full-time staff and probably the work of six. That's a huge jump in the amount of stock checking that's happening at a store. So i wonder why wal-mart is investing in robots to fill this role, when there are so many other important jobs that they could automate instead. and the answer i land on is that the quantity-on-hand is critically important if you're using the store as a warehouse for a local delivery operation. If you've advertised something as in-stock for same-day delivery on your website, and then you let customers in to browse around your warehouse and move things around, having roaming scanners checking for mis-homed items is suddenly a lot more important.
- zeckalpha 9y agoAs other jobs get automated, inventory checking could get more important.
- forgotmypw 9y agoIt could also be for the same reasons you stated: it's low-controversy and low-responsibility.
- Trav5 9y agoLow-controversy, but visible. Wich will introduce people to the idea gently. They can add features to the robots later with less resistance.
- posterboy 9y agoavailability is a psychologic factor in purchase decisions. The more in the soup pot, the more soup people will eat. Whereas the beloved low stock fear of missing out trigger might be too hectic for retail. The warehousing aspect is interesting too.
- dingo_bat 9y agoWhy would you raise minimum wage and not expect this? In my opinion, this does more good than bad. At least it frees up people to do something other than the deadbeat Walmart job.
- brianbreslin 9y agoThis is letting them reduce theft. Shrinkage as its called in industry parlance is mostly caused by employees. Now you can make sure no inventory is mishandled. Walmart loses BILLIONS every year from just employee theft.
- gruez 9y agohow does scanning aisles reduce employee theft?
- eddz 9y ago> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers. This is probably the most textbook spin I've ever seen. It's as if their PR firm didn't even try. These robots are obviously being deployed to increase margins. Personally I would have went for the "adding more value" angle, either by suggesting to the customer that "Your favourite product is more likely to be on shelves", or positioning these robots as "helpers" to shelf-stackers.
- umeshunni 9y agoDepends on whom the message is meant for. Bossanova's pitch to Walmart: Our robots will increase your margins. Walmart's internal comms: Our new robots will help our associates save time to focus on other tasks that help our customers. Walmart's external PR: Our new robot associates will ensure that your favorite product is more likely to be on shelves.
- eric_h 9y ago> Personally I would have went for the "adding more value" angle, either by suggesting to the customer that "Your favourite product is more likely to be on shelves", or positioning these robots as "helpers" to shelf-stackers. That's exactly the spin the company that makes the robot is using: http://www.bossanova.com http://www.bossanova.com
- arnmac 9y agoIf you have ever worked at walmart before you know they already have walmarts. Work there long enough and you become like one.
- fra 9y agoI'd love to know who makes those critters. Does walmart have a full-fledged robotics team working on it? Did they acquire someone? Or are they buying them from someone else?
- pjy04 9y agoThese robots are from Bossa Nova Robotics
- agumonkey 9y agoFeels weird watching a Jetsons episode about to land in reality
- vinchuco 9y agohttps://i.imgur.com/bVSKmXD.png https://i.imgur.com/bVSKmXD.png
- CaptSpify 9y agodisable javascript and you stop getting those messages
- maheshs 9y agoI think in coming future, human will revolt again this robot bullshit. Human probably won't use items which are fully automated or done by robot.
- majewsky 9y agoAs an intellectual exercise, please define "robot", especially as opposed to "machine" and "tool".
- bipr0 9y agoWith Amazon chocking the air out of Walmart, i think automation in this sector is majorly done to improve customers experience. Whatever it is i think its more of a bold business tactic than simply automation.
- nether 9y agoRobot9000
- mnw21cam 9y agoYet another web site that thinks I am using an ad blocker.
- Flenser 9y agoWeird, when I click the artlicle's link: http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-store-robot-program-expands-2017-10?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Falleyinsider%2Fsilicon_alley_insider+%28Silicon+Alley+Insider%29 http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-store-robot-program-e... I end up here: http://www.businessinsider.com/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/walmart-store-robot-program-expands-2017-10&r=US&IR=T?IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/(null)/(null)/(null)/(null)/(... With a page that says "Header overflow" No kidding!
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoDoes it have the Three Laws in its programming?
- xexers 9y agoIs it just me... or is the movie "Wall-E" one of the premiere sci-fi movies of our time? This walmart robot could easily be in that movie along with all of the other little robots doing menial tasks for fat humans.
- dmix 9y agoIn the pic it scans all the shelves with camera. Does this mean Walmart has to change where they place the price/SKU tags, so it can be easily scanned? Or is OCR+location good enough to determine the products.
- chaoticmass 9y ago"The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers." HA-HA... right. Any time I ask for help finding something in Wal-mart the person feigns ignorance. They're not compensated well enough to actually be helpful.
- turc1656 9y agoI suspect this has to do with how Walmart has been ramping up there internet game over the past 1-2 years. They have an API similar to Amazon's for pulling product info and placing orders (it's still in beta last I checked). Walmart has already started doing the 2 day delivery thing a while ago for free (no "prime" needed) for orders above the purchase threshold. They then started allowing you to order online and pick up in stored (including groceries). I think we are going to see Walmart start competing with Amazon even harder. And here's the thing most people don't even realize - Amazon's main business unit dealing with retail sales loses a metric shit ton of money. Amazon just released it's latest quarterly report and somehow people thought it was a good report. It wasn't. Sure, Cloud services are doing well. But Amazon as an entire company makes only a 1.3% profit margin. That includes the high margin cloud business. The actual retail business? It loses 18%!!! That loss is up from 15% the previous quarter. In 2013 those losses were 2-4%! Amazon is getting absolutely ravaged in their retail sales business. Walmart, on the other hand, has margins of about 2.35% and pretty much all they do is retail business. And let's not forget that Walmart has massive brick and mortar stores all around the country and they can still turn a profit. Amazon, who has at this time nearly 0 physical retail spaces (other than a few test/trial stores) manages to piss away nearly 1 in every 5 dollars it takes in from their retail unit. I sincerely think that Walmart is going to figure out a way in the next 5-10 years to utterly decimate Amazon's main line of business.