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