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Walmart’s Robotic Workforce Grows at 650 Additional Stores
Walmart is expanding its workforce of shelf-scanning robots at 650 more U.S. stores in an effort to better monitor and re-supply items as customers purchase them. The world’s largest retailer plans to boost its fleet of robots in stores to 1,000 by the end of the summer.
Keeping shelves full is a vexing problem and costs retailers nearly a trillion dollars annually, according to research by IHL Group. The robots are seen as a way to improve that process and reflects a change in the actual environment of the retail space.
The six-foot-tall Bossa Nova devices, designed by San Francisco-based Bossa Nova Robotics Inc., each come equipped with 15 cameras that check for out of stock items as they traverse store aisles. That information is then sent to handheld devices so employees can restock shelves more efficiently and quickly.
Walmart is continuing to push forward on technology efforts to incorporate an increasingly automated workforce for tasks such as scrubbing floors, unloading trucks and gathering online grocery orders. The initiatives are envisioned to help reduce costs, improve store performance and gain credibility as a technology innovator, while trying to keep pace with Amazon. The robotic shelf-scanners are expected to reduce tasks that could have taken as long as two weeks into a twice-daily routine.
John Crecelius, Walmart’s senior president of store innovations, told Bloomberg, “It speeds up the entire cycle.”
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