March 23, 2018 • 4 mins
Walmart is expanding the use of robots at its stores with a new fleet of autonomous robots that constantly scan store shelves to identify out of stock items so they can be replenished faster.Watch the video:http://ktla.com/2018/03/23/walmart-uses-robots-to-roam-aisles-looking-for-out-of-stock-items/Follow Rich on Social Media:Facebook: http://facebook.com/RichOnTechTwitter: http://twitter.com/richdemuroInstagram: http://instagram.com/richontechNEW! You can add the Rich on Tech Daily Update to your Alexa Flash Briefing! Just search for the "Rich on Tech" skill in your Alexa app and add it to your briefing! You'll get a daily dose of tech news each day and a longer show on the weekends!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Robots roaming the aisles at Walmart. Omrich Demiro. This is
rich on Tech Daily. Walmart is expanding the use of
robots at its stores. It's something we're seeing over and
over with a lot of different companies. We saw a
robot in action at their Burbank, California store. It's a
robot from a company called Boston Nova Robotics. They're based
up in San Francisco, and its job is to roam
(00:25):
the store and constantly scan the store shelves to look
for out of stock items. It's also looking for missing
shelf labels and items that are priced incorrectly. And if
you look at the robot, it kind of seems like
a big floor cleaner with kind of a giant tower
coming out of the top, and it's packed with all
kinds of cameras and sensors. There's two D, three D
and LDAR, which is similar to what those self driving
(00:48):
cars use. And that's important because this robot works its
way around the store all by itself and yes, when
customers are present, that is the main thing. This doesn't
happen overnight when everyone leaves the store. This happens as
customers are in the store, so it can actually identify
what's out of stock.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
In near real time. Here's how it works.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It roams the aisles and it takes photos of every
shelf and every aisle as it moves along. It takes
a lot of pictures and it stitches them all together,
but also has these super bright lights on it, so
it kind of bathes the store shelves in these bright
lights so it can see everything properly.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It's kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It looks like a giant wand going across the shelves. Now,
all these pictures become giant panoramic pictures that are terabytes
of data that's sent to computers to be analyzed. And
the idea here is that basically Walmart can identify which
items are out of stock and then they kind of check, okay,
is that item on its way? Do we have more
on the top shelf or do we have more in
the back, and then they can restock items faster than ever,
(01:44):
and they can also get an idea of real time
stock numbers. They also get a real time idea of
how much stock they have, and they can also identify
issues with pricing and labels in near real time as well.
This all solves several pain points for customers, like how
annoying is it when you go to a store in
an item you want is stock. So more retailers are
letting you check stock online before you go into a store,
(02:04):
or even reserve items online.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
To pick up.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So this could really help out with all of that
in the future. Right now, the robots are part of
a test pilot, but they can scan an entire store
in a day, one hundred and fifty thousand items. They
do a bunch of aisles in an hour, but they
do need to be recharged after a few hours of work.
Now there is the big question, is this replacing humans?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
That's the question I always get from folks.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Walmart, of course says it's not, but they say it's
helping them now. Usually a human worker has to go
through and do all of this manually. It's kind of
a repetitive process. They go through the aisles, they have
one of those kind of scan guns, they check the stock,
and they identify the problem areas. But the robot can
do all of this much more frequently and it's automatic.
So Walmart says this frees up to humans the associates
(02:46):
in their stores to bring the stock to the aisles,
put it on the shelves, fix those pricing issues or
put those items back in their.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Place, and also help customers. Now.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Watching the robot do its work was pretty mesmerizing folks
in the store that I was seeing.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
You know, they just have people in the stores.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
They were all taking pictures kind of selfies with the robot,
wondering what it's doing. I think Walmart should put some
sort of sign somewhere explaining what this robot's doing, because
lots of people just think it's cleaning the.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Floors, but it's doing much more.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Walmart tested this technology in a few stores in Arkansas, Pennsylvania,
and California. Apparently they liked what the robots were doing enough,
so they've expanded to fifty stores now, including the location
we saw in Burbank. There's also locations in Lancaster, Palmdale,
and Santa Clarita using the robots. That's just in the
SoCal area, but there's other states as well. If this
works out and Walmart sees big benefits from these robots,
(03:34):
this could be a huge rollout. Walmart has over eleven
thousand stores, and they know the competition is heating up.
There are so many delivery services out there, like Amazon
and even Walmart's own in store pickup, which this could
be a big benefit for Here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
The robots know.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Exactly where everything is in the store, so Walmart could
use that information to lead customers right to specific products
faster than ever. They also know when they're in stock.
Now keep in mind humans have been doing this forever.
When I worked it off as depot many years ago,
part of our training was to know where every single
product in the store was and in what aisle they
were in. So when a customer asked, hey, where are
the rubber bands boom, you could tell them which aile
(04:10):
they were in. So I guess in the future we're
going to be asking robots where things are.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
I can even see.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
A time in the future when you enter a store,
you want an item and a little tiny robot leads
you to the exact product you want.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Wouldn't that be crazy?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
You can see the video of the Walmart robots in
action just go to my website rich on tech dot tv.
If you like this podcast, please rate and review it
in the Apple Podcasts app that way more people can
discover it.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I'm rich Demiro rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I'll talk to you real soon.
Robots roaming the aisles at Walmart. Omrich Demiro. This is
rich on Tech Daily. Walmart is expanding the use of
robots at its stores. It's something we're seeing over and
over with a lot of different companies. We saw a
robot in action at their Burbank, California store. It's a
robot from a company called Boston Nova Robotics. They're based
up in San Francisco, and its job is to roam
(00:25):
the store and constantly scan the store shelves to look
for out of stock items. It's also looking for missing
shelf labels and items that are priced incorrectly. And if
you look at the robot, it kind of seems like
a big floor cleaner with kind of a giant tower
coming out of the top, and it's packed with all
kinds of cameras and sensors. There's two D, three D
and LDAR, which is similar to what those self driving
(00:48):
cars use. And that's important because this robot works its
way around the store all by itself and yes, when
customers are present, that is the main thing. This doesn't
happen overnight when everyone leaves the store. This happens as
customers are in the store, so it can actually identify
what's out of stock.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
In near real time. Here's how it works.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It roams the aisles and it takes photos of every
shelf and every aisle as it moves along. It takes
a lot of pictures and it stitches them all together,
but also has these super bright lights on it, so
it kind of bathes the store shelves in these bright
lights so it can see everything properly.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It's kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It looks like a giant wand going across the shelves. Now,
all these pictures become giant panoramic pictures that are terabytes
of data that's sent to computers to be analyzed. And
the idea here is that basically Walmart can identify which
items are out of stock and then they kind of check, okay,
is that item on its way? Do we have more
on the top shelf or do we have more in
the back, and then they can restock items faster than ever,
(01:44):
and they can also get an idea of real time
stock numbers. They also get a real time idea of
how much stock they have, and they can also identify
issues with pricing and labels in near real time as well.
This all solves several pain points for customers, like how
annoying is it when you go to a store in
an item you want is stock. So more retailers are
letting you check stock online before you go into a store,
(02:04):
or even reserve items online.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
To pick up.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So this could really help out with all of that
in the future. Right now, the robots are part of
a test pilot, but they can scan an entire store
in a day, one hundred and fifty thousand items. They
do a bunch of aisles in an hour, but they
do need to be recharged after a few hours of work.
Now there is the big question, is this replacing humans?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
That's the question I always get from folks.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Walmart, of course says it's not, but they say it's
helping them now. Usually a human worker has to go
through and do all of this manually. It's kind of
a repetitive process. They go through the aisles, they have
one of those kind of scan guns, they check the stock,
and they identify the problem areas. But the robot can
do all of this much more frequently and it's automatic.
So Walmart says this frees up to humans the associates
(02:46):
in their stores to bring the stock to the aisles,
put it on the shelves, fix those pricing issues or
put those items back in their.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Place, and also help customers. Now.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Watching the robot do its work was pretty mesmerizing folks
in the store that I was seeing.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
You know, they just have people in the stores.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
They were all taking pictures kind of selfies with the robot,
wondering what it's doing. I think Walmart should put some
sort of sign somewhere explaining what this robot's doing, because
lots of people just think it's cleaning the.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Floors, but it's doing much more.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Walmart tested this technology in a few stores in Arkansas, Pennsylvania,
and California. Apparently they liked what the robots were doing enough,
so they've expanded to fifty stores now, including the location
we saw in Burbank. There's also locations in Lancaster, Palmdale,
and Santa Clarita using the robots. That's just in the
SoCal area, but there's other states as well. If this
works out and Walmart sees big benefits from these robots,
(03:34):
this could be a huge rollout. Walmart has over eleven
thousand stores, and they know the competition is heating up.
There are so many delivery services out there, like Amazon
and even Walmart's own in store pickup, which this could
be a big benefit for Here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
The robots know.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Exactly where everything is in the store, so Walmart could
use that information to lead customers right to specific products
faster than ever. They also know when they're in stock.
Now keep in mind humans have been doing this forever.
When I worked it off as depot many years ago,
part of our training was to know where every single
product in the store was and in what aisle they
were in. So when a customer asked, hey, where are
the rubber bands boom, you could tell them which aile
(04:10):
they were in. So I guess in the future we're
going to be asking robots where things are.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
I can even see.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
A time in the future when you enter a store,
you want an item and a little tiny robot leads
you to the exact product you want.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Wouldn't that be crazy?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
You can see the video of the Walmart robots in
action just go to my website rich on tech dot tv.
If you like this podcast, please rate and review it
in the Apple Podcasts app that way more people can
discover it.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I'm rich Demiro rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I'll talk to you real soon.
Host
Rich DeMuro
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