Video Tip: Walmart Robots Stroll Down the Aisles Taking Inventory

Robots aren’t just for sale in the toy aisle, they’re gliding down them. “Bossa Nova Robotics is sending its shelf-scanning robots out to 50 Walmart stores in a real-world use of technology to help one of the planet’s largest retailers keep its aisles stocked and ready for customers,” writes the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Nov. 9, 2017).

The Bossa Nova uses sensors similar to those on self-driving cars to navigate — taking photos of shelves, as well as recording data about products’ prices, locations and if they’re out of stock. The 2 foot tall white robot simply scans, passes information to the cloud, communicates that data to Walmart’s back-end system and relays that knowledge to store associates.

With e-commerce sales growing exponentially each year, brick-and-mortar chains need to operate near-perfectly to retain customers. A lost sale in a physical retail store has always been an inefficiency, but now the stakes are higher. “The information the robot is capturing is whether there’s an out-of-stock, because that is the biggest frustration of shoppers,” said a Bossa Nova exec. “If they don’t have it, you’re going home without it — or maybe you go to a different store.”

The Bossa Nova Robot employs a number of sensors, including light detection and ranging (lidar) technology, a critical element in self-driving cars. Gliding slowly down a store aisle — at about 0.4 meters per second, or a rather lax walking pace — the robot scans its environment with depth sensors to avoid collisions with shelves, or more importantly, people. As soon as a customer gets close, the robot moves out of the way and shuts off its high beams.

Embedded in the article is a short (1.5 minute video) you may wish to show in class when discussing inventory management in Chapter 12.