7 ms·

> 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 emp

• comboy 9y ago
  Why does it have to be a robot riding around? Couldn't the same thing be done from a camera on the ceiling?
  • Operyl 9y ago
    Because robots look cooler. Also, I imagine it’s probably doing some stuff with depth perception crap and what have you.
  • arkitaip 9y ago
    But then you would have to spend lots of money of redesigning ceilings, having regular maintenance work done, etc.
  • markkanof 9y ago
    It 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 ago
      Like Oto (sp?) from Wall-E?
  • maxerickson 9y ago
    They 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      What 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 ago
    This 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 ago
      Market 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 ago
        Especially 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 ago
          Their 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 ago
  Brickseek?
• Bromskloss 9y ago
  > http://www.bossanova.com/ http://www.bossanova.com/ Oh no, it's _ugly_!
  • prawn 9y ago
    I don't think it's that bad. It's meant to be practical and inoffensive rather than especially stylish.
    • Bromskloss 9y ago
      If, at least, it could have been offensive!
      • krapp 9y ago
        They missed a perfect opportunity to give it legs and have it clomp around the aisles muttering "gonk... gonk..."
        • foobarian 9y ago
          I see what they did there. Bossanova --> nova boss --> new overlord
• 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 ago
    Anecdote 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 ago
      Yeah, 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 ago
      You’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.