Walmart’s Robot Army Has Arrived
As robots start to move into more public places, like streets and stores, the people who encounter them won’t have any kind of instruction manual on how to engage with them. One of the main places this is happening? The aisles of your local Walmart. For years, Walmart has been automating its warehouses with robots that can pack and sort items as they zoom along conveyor belts. But the company has also slowly been rolling out robots that roam around store aisles alongside customers, launching in 50 stores in 2017 and rolling out to 350 in 2019. These bots are designed to scan shelves looking for items that are out of stock, eliminating a time-intensive chore that human workers no longer have to do—though workers still have to refill the shelves when the robot finds a missing product. Read more at Fast Company.
If they’ll replace some of the absolutely abysmal store clerks I might return to Walmart. I long ago stopped going to Walmart in favor of online shopping mostly at Amazon for everyday stuff. Yeah, yeah … I should support local economies. That feeling died the day a Walmart clerk told me they didn’t carry Crocs or anything like them. When I showed her the display (I found it myself) she just walked away in a huff. Last visit was in 2015 I think.