Retail Robots are already freeing workers from routine tasks, presumably giving them more time for customer interaction. They are also delivering granular data about the status of merchandise that would be impossible to get otherwise. Retailers rely on robots to help with micro-fulfillment operations, inventory management, and cleaning. This is especially important during the Covid-19 pandemic, when employees have limited contact with customers.
Retail Robots are becoming increasingly commonplace in stores, with some robots performing backstage, non-customer-facing tasks, while others directly assist store associates with customer-facing functions. These applications include scanning shelves to identify mispriced items, detecting and relocating items on the floor, and alerting associates to price changes and missing tags. Some are like the proverbial low hanging fruit, offering immediate benefits and relatively modest costs. Others are more complex and require a bigger investment.Eager to boost sales, relieve labor shortage pressures, and improve customer satisfaction, retailers are adding automated robots to store aisles. Outfitted with cameras and sensors, robots like Brain Corp's LoweBot scan shelves to verify price signs and note out-of-stock products. These robots are being used by chains such as BJ's Wholesale and Walmart-owned Sam's Club. Other robots use AI to update inventory records. An unattended bot, can scan receipts and update sales data in an ERP system every day. This can eliminate the Sisyphean task of re-placing products that customers have moved, and also help prevent errors, such as transcribing two slightly different names for the same product. However, this type of robotics raises concerns about privacy and security. Retail Robots may be collecting a great deal of personal information about customers. As Walmart has started testing a shelf-scanning robot developed by San Francisco startup Bossa Nova. It travels the aisles, scanning shelves for gaps in product so retailers can keep them fully stocked. It can even identify a product that is out of stock, a problem that cost U.S. retailers $82 billion in 2021. Sam’s Club is deploying another shelf-scanning Retail Robots, made by Simbe Robotics. It rides on the top of a robotic floor scrubber from Tennant Company and uses Brain Corp’s AI-powered BrainOS operating system. It has been added to the fleet of about 600 robots that already roam the floors at Sam’s stores. The dual-functioning robots, called Tally, transmit inventory information to a cloud-based system that alerts store managers about on-shelf availability and pricing accuracy. Many hand-wringing headlines suggest a Retail Robots takeover, whereas in the retail space, there are a number of uses for robots that do not involve replacing humans. Frontline service robots like Pepper (from SoftBank) and OSHbot (from Lowe’s Orchard Supply Hardware) can assist customers with their questions, providing product information and guiding them to shelves. Backstage robots can also help retailers streamline non-customer-facing tasks. Meijer's Tally robot checks prices and alerts employees when products are incorrectly priced or missing, and some Hilton hotels use Whiz to clean floors. While customers have a positive view of frontline Retail Robots, research on backstage robotic customer service is inconclusive. It may be important to design robots with human characteristics that are suited to their intended roles, so that they can satisfy the expectations of consumers without falling into the “uncanny valley.” As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, retail warehouses have not been able to keep up with consumer demand. As a solution, many companies have turned to advanced robotics in warehouses to help with the picking process. The resulting automation helps with both order fulfillment and worker safety by helping prevent them from having to walk the long distances between shelves.
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