6 ms·

From someone inside Walmart: """ The original idea was to have a few extra security cameras and some mirrors. I think it took 2 mirrors per aisle and only a fe

by petra 6y ago

From someone inside Walmart: """ The original idea was to have a few extra security cameras and some mirrors. I think it took 2 mirrors per aisle and only a few 4k color security cameras with infrared to cover the fast moving items. After prototyping we find exactly what you said. Turns out it doesn't matter how well you know you need to stock items, if you don't give enough people-hours to do it, the number of items on the shelf doesn't change. The robots were probably pitched by the Walmart dot com or Jet dot com guys. Thier projects always were greenlit without any analysis and rarely worked. """ https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/jmx78e/walmart_ends_contract_with_robotics_company_opts/gayzr7g/ https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/jmx78e/walmart_...

roland35 6y ago
Thanks for the insight, that seems plausible to me! A moving robot doesn't make too much sense in this application since the products and shelving is stationary. It just adds a ton of complexity. What's interesting is the Amazon store concept which just like this post is heavily based on cameras watching the shelves.
- GarrisonPrime 6y ago
  The idea was for the shelf scanning robots to send messages when they found a low stock item or a mess, and then a human could just load up a cart with stock from the back room and head directly to the problem areas. This would be in contrast to having people regularly walk every aisle and examine everything personally, going back and forth to get stock repeatedly. Much time was wasted. As a former Walmart employee I was actually excited to see these proposed. But now with so many people walking the aisles collecting items for pickup, I guess they’re just going to have them send “problem detected” messages instead of the robots. Which is fine I guess. Shopping there has become an even greater hassle with all the employees and their pickup carts, but that’s a whole other issue.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    All items are scanned on the way out anyway - you should be able to get an idea when an item is low on stock from that alone, no? Sure there will still be things like people in the store that haven't checked out yet, but... What am I missing?
    - nefitty 6y ago
      Maybe that data is not sufficiently relayed to people on the floor? It also misses theft, although that can eventually become an assumed rate.
      - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
        That's what I mean, though. They have decades of data at this point, you can likely guess what the theft rate is. How much do these margins really matter? Probably not enough to have a robot that's very pricy going up and down isles.
    - confidantlake 6y ago
      When an item comes in from a truck it either goes directly onto the sales floor, into overstock (a high shelf above the other items), or into the backroom. People put things back in random places, stuff get destroyed (think of dropping a can on the ground), stuff get stollen, cashiers make a mistake, people make a mistake in self checkout, probably other stuff I am missing. It is a store, things are chaotic. Let's take the journey of some cans of Goya black beans. 12 come in on a truck. The shelf capacity for them is 4. The person unloading the truck takes beans to the sales-floor, puts 4 on the shelf, puts 4 into overstock puts 4 into the backroom. Joe walks in takes a can, drops it and it bends. Jane comes along takes a can, continues shopping, the changes her mind and leaves it somewhere in the cereal aisle. Janet comes along and takes a can, takes it to self checkout but forgets to scan it. Jacob comes along takes a can, takes it to the checkout, and 1 can is subtracted from inventory. Inventory shows 11 cans, but there are actually 0 cans out on the sales floor. And I haven't even gotten into stuff being misplaced in the backroom ect.
    - mrtranscendence 6y ago
- roughly 6y ago
  I'm extremely curious about the loss rate at the Amazon stores. They're relatively new, but I'm going to be a bit surprised if they don't wind up having half a store walk off on them at some point. I think we've all seen enough examples of what happens when you release algorithmic systems into the wild.
ksec 6y ago
Thank You. In terms of Warehouse Automation, does anyone knows how well does Walmart compare to Amazon?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- wil421 6y ago
  Does Walmart need the same automation as Amazon? Does Walmart even need pickers or are they just filling up trucks with pallets and merchandise already packaged? Brick and mortar warehousing seems like it would be much different than online retail warehousing.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    They need something. They get a truck of toilet paper from the paper mill, and a truck of coffee from the roaster to the warehouse. What goes out of the warehouse is a 2 trucks to two different stores, each with half coffee, half toilet paper. I'm grossly simplifying the above, but the idea should be clear. WalMart doesn't store things in their warehouses so much as take them off of trucks and put a different mix of thing on other trucks. There is lots of room for automation, but it will look very different from Amazon.
  - LeonB 6y ago
    There’s still a lot of individual item picking due to (as TFA mentions) > ...precise inventory is also essential for Walmart’s increasingly popular pickup and delivery services. ...and I can see highly accurate inventory helping that (and as a shopper I’d like it there was warehouse style ‘pick to light’ systems in supermarkets (perhaps using Augmented Reality))
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      warehouse style ‘pick to light’ systems Seriously, watching one person pick one order from retail shelves is kind of aggravstingly inefficient, when (and this is probably already starting to happen) they could have everything picked in bulk with an optimized path through the shelves for a batch of orders, then put-to-light each order.
steve76 6y ago
Spend billions chasing nickels and dimes in leakage. Encourage a drunken mob to steal and burn everything in sight. I wonder why surrounding communities hate you. The best robot you could make would be one that drops a giant cage around the parking lot and flips the sign to COUNTY PRISON.
LoSboccacc 6y ago
the robot as seen in the video makes zero sense, a railing camera on the ceiling or top of the opposite shelf would do the same in a fraction of the time because it doesn't have to be slow to avoid injuring people and will have greater accuracy due the fixed nature of the shelfs spatial relationships, moreover it doesn't have to come with complex navigation software and hardware. research is fine and all, but this is quite far from something that could have resulted in a production run.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  The problem with ceiling camera on rails would be that it won't see stuff in the lower shelves. It would be best to have a camera at human level, or lower. But going this way, why not put a camera on each shelf, looking at the shelf opposite of it? I.e. if you have shelf A and shelf B opposite each other, the camera on A looks at B, and camera on B looks at A. The goal would be to have each shelf seen by at least one camera. It now becomes a problem of integrating data, but I can't imagine it being more complex than crowd-navigating robots, or even moving cameras on rails.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    > or top of the opposite shelf angle would be about same from top or ceiling > on each shelf, looking at the shelf opposite of it it would cost a lot more than a camera on rail, especially the wiring but also bandwidth
duxup 6y ago
I've run into this issue a number of times, in terms of processes and straight up code. Management teams often love the idea of things that prompt humans to do a thing, under the guise of saving human work hours due to magical 'efficiencies'. But somehow it is often lost on them that they're actually simply prompting ... more (or even just the same amount) human work hours. Later the idea is often eventually scrapped when they finally associate it with human work hours. It's this strange constant cycle.

by petra 6y ago

roland35 6y ago

Thanks for the insight, that seems plausible to me! A moving robot doesn't make too much sense in this application since the products and shelving is stationary. It just adds a ton of complexity. What's interesting is the Amazon store concept which just like this post is heavily based on cameras watching the shelves.

GarrisonPrime 6y ago
The idea was for the shelf scanning robots to send messages when they found a low stock item or a mess, and then a human could just load up a cart with stock from the back room and head directly to the problem areas. This would be in contrast to having people regularly walk every aisle and examine everything personally, going back and forth to get stock repeatedly. Much time was wasted. As a former Walmart employee I was actually excited to see these proposed. But now with so many people walking the aisles collecting items for pickup, I guess they’re just going to have them send “problem detected” messages instead of the robots. Which is fine I guess. Shopping there has become an even greater hassle with all the employees and their pickup carts, but that’s a whole other issue.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  All items are scanned on the way out anyway - you should be able to get an idea when an item is low on stock from that alone, no? Sure there will still be things like people in the store that haven't checked out yet, but... What am I missing?
  - nefitty 6y ago
    Maybe that data is not sufficiently relayed to people on the floor? It also misses theft, although that can eventually become an assumed rate.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      That's what I mean, though. They have decades of data at this point, you can likely guess what the theft rate is. How much do these margins really matter? Probably not enough to have a robot that's very pricy going up and down isles.
  - confidantlake 6y ago
    When an item comes in from a truck it either goes directly onto the sales floor, into overstock (a high shelf above the other items), or into the backroom. People put things back in random places, stuff get destroyed (think of dropping a can on the ground), stuff get stollen, cashiers make a mistake, people make a mistake in self checkout, probably other stuff I am missing. It is a store, things are chaotic. Let's take the journey of some cans of Goya black beans. 12 come in on a truck. The shelf capacity for them is 4. The person unloading the truck takes beans to the sales-floor, puts 4 on the shelf, puts 4 into overstock puts 4 into the backroom. Joe walks in takes a can, drops it and it bends. Jane comes along takes a can, continues shopping, the changes her mind and leaves it somewhere in the cereal aisle. Janet comes along and takes a can, takes it to self checkout but forgets to scan it. Jacob comes along takes a can, takes it to the checkout, and 1 can is subtracted from inventory. Inventory shows 11 cans, but there are actually 0 cans out on the sales floor. And I haven't even gotten into stuff being misplaced in the backroom ect.
  - mrtranscendence 6y ago
roughly 6y ago
I'm extremely curious about the loss rate at the Amazon stores. They're relatively new, but I'm going to be a bit surprised if they don't wind up having half a store walk off on them at some point. I think we've all seen enough examples of what happens when you release algorithmic systems into the wild.

ksec 6y ago

Thank You. In terms of Warehouse Automation, does anyone knows how well does Walmart compare to Amazon?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wil421 6y ago
Does Walmart need the same automation as Amazon? Does Walmart even need pickers or are they just filling up trucks with pallets and merchandise already packaged? Brick and mortar warehousing seems like it would be much different than online retail warehousing.
- bluGill 6y ago
  They need something. They get a truck of toilet paper from the paper mill, and a truck of coffee from the roaster to the warehouse. What goes out of the warehouse is a 2 trucks to two different stores, each with half coffee, half toilet paper. I'm grossly simplifying the above, but the idea should be clear. WalMart doesn't store things in their warehouses so much as take them off of trucks and put a different mix of thing on other trucks. There is lots of room for automation, but it will look very different from Amazon.
- LeonB 6y ago
  There’s still a lot of individual item picking due to (as TFA mentions) > ...precise inventory is also essential for Walmart’s increasingly popular pickup and delivery services. ...and I can see highly accurate inventory helping that (and as a shopper I’d like it there was warehouse style ‘pick to light’ systems in supermarkets (perhaps using Augmented Reality))
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    warehouse style ‘pick to light’ systems Seriously, watching one person pick one order from retail shelves is kind of aggravstingly inefficient, when (and this is probably already starting to happen) they could have everything picked in bulk with an optimized path through the shelves for a batch of orders, then put-to-light each order.

steve76 6y ago

Spend billions chasing nickels and dimes in leakage. Encourage a drunken mob to steal and burn everything in sight. I wonder why surrounding communities hate you. The best robot you could make would be one that drops a giant cage around the parking lot and flips the sign to COUNTY PRISON.

LoSboccacc 6y ago

the robot as seen in the video makes zero sense, a railing camera on the ceiling or top of the opposite shelf would do the same in a fraction of the time because it doesn't have to be slow to avoid injuring people and will have greater accuracy due the fixed nature of the shelfs spatial relationships, moreover it doesn't have to come with complex navigation software and hardware. research is fine and all, but this is quite far from something that could have resulted in a production run.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
The problem with ceiling camera on rails would be that it won't see stuff in the lower shelves. It would be best to have a camera at human level, or lower. But going this way, why not put a camera on each shelf, looking at the shelf opposite of it? I.e. if you have shelf A and shelf B opposite each other, the camera on A looks at B, and camera on B looks at A. The goal would be to have each shelf seen by at least one camera. It now becomes a problem of integrating data, but I can't imagine it being more complex than crowd-navigating robots, or even moving cameras on rails.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  > or top of the opposite shelf angle would be about same from top or ceiling > on each shelf, looking at the shelf opposite of it it would cost a lot more than a camera on rail, especially the wiring but also bandwidth

duxup 6y ago

I've run into this issue a number of times, in terms of processes and straight up code. Management teams often love the idea of things that prompt humans to do a thing, under the guise of saving human work hours due to magical 'efficiencies'. But somehow it is often lost on them that they're actually simply prompting ... more (or even just the same amount) human work hours. Later the idea is often eventually scrapped when they finally associate it with human work hours. It's this strange constant cycle.