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Walmart Experimenting With Robotic Shopping Cart For Stores (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Bloomberg: Bloomberg reports Walmart is working with a robotics company to develop a shopping cart that helps customers find items on their lists and saves them from pushing a heavy cart through a sprawling store and parking lot. The carts are a way for brick-and-mortar stores to stay relevant in the convenience factor to match the likes of Amazon and other online retailers, says founder and chief executive officer of Five Elements Robotics Wendy Roberts. She said on Tuesday at the Bloomberg Technology Conference 2016 that her company was working with the "world's largest retailer" on such a shopping cart. In 2014, Five Elements Robotics introduced Budgee, a personal robot that can follow its user around inside and outdoors and carry things. The robot costs $1,400 and is helpful for people with disabilities, says Roberts.
We are almost there... just a little further to go till full Wall-E http://www.peopleofwalmart.com...
What the hell is musice? They can't even look for typos on their own website and we're supposed to trust the A.I. in this thing?
Is it good for people to consume food without having to expend any calories?
helps customers find items on their lists
So the robot actually does the opposite of what stores want. Stores themselves like to make the customer take the least efficient way, because that brings the customer in contact with the most products. For the customers themselves, however, this might be useful.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Come on! I NEED to move around more, not LESS! It's hard enough sitting at computer desk all day in a cubicle. That 40lb box of cat litter provides me with free weight training. Plus Walmart stores are so BIG I can get my steps in.
So now I have to load all of this into my car, drive it home and unload it? Grocery shopping should be as difficult as registering for wedding registries. Give me a barcode scanner and let me walk through the store. When I check out let me schedule a delivery time.
It will be destroyed by the mob at Christmas who are trying to buy it
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Conclusion: Americans are getting so fat and out of shape that they can't push a shopping cart around anymore.
Soon you'll replace shopping carts with golf carts, so they won't even have to carry yourself around.
Because Walmart shoppers already get so much exercise and are in such great shape that any form of exercise is not needed. I am saddened by the fact that we are now to the point where we consider pushing a shopping cart around the store to be too much work.
How about scrapping the electric drive but keeping the locator aspect. That would seem to cut the costs dramatically while giving the greatest benefit. I really think most of the people I see in Walmart could use to push the cart themselves
Navigating the store is already a challenge due to self-absorbed customers choking aisles at any narrowing or intersection (observe sometime, shoppers routinely stop to make decisions or have conversations at the worst possible traffic chokepoints). No way is a robot cart programmed to follow without collisions going to navigate that mess on its own.
on the up side, the robot carts can be programmed to auto-return from the parking lot when empty, so all the carts aren't left spread all over the parking lot.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
These new buggies are controlled using the customer's back boobs.
Why is it that shopping with a shopping cart and real shelves is so much easier and more pleasant than scrolling through most stores list of products on line. I've shopped food stores online, hardware stores online, which have real world analogs for direct comparison. All of these are okay if you know exactly what you are looking for and they have a tolerable search engine. But it terms of going down the isles and selecting new things or being reminded of old things and getting ideas for new creations stores are efficient I think.
I suppose you could let someone walk through a virtual store like a first person shooter. But Somehow that doesn't appeal to me.
I think however an oculous might be able to recreate a true 3D store experience.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
so now, instead of dumb carts left all over the parking lot, we'll have carts being left that will run into cars and infants in baby buggies in their attempt to go back to the store..... and the customers will not have to put them into the cart stalls... more room to park... less need to think...
and someone will find a way to override the controls to have races in the parking lot....
Scroll down to the bottom of the page on Slashdot.
I do that, and it says "Heisengberg might have been here."
Ooooo-kay.
Orrrr Walmart could hire/pay helpful employees...like Publix....
" a shopping cart that helps customers find items on their lists "
So it takes you to Target?
I'd be happy to find a shopping cart at Walmart where all the wheels actually turn and don't make horrible screeching noises.
Here is what the shopping robots will look like.
And here's a render of a typical Wal-Mart with the shop-bots in use.
And a close up of happy shoppers.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Ha, ha... ho, ho... ho, *snort*
I've see the Budgee in action. Or more precisely, in inaction. Or random action. It is poorly designed, cheaply made, and the software is unreliable. Also, the industrial design aesthetic of two asymmetric "eyes" recalls "Bill-the-Cat" from the old Bloom County cartoon.
Budgees shopping in Walmart == flying pigs.
The wal-marters will be riding in the robo-carts when no shopping chariots are available . #FirstWorldProblems
too fat and too fuckin lazy to live!
all I can say is, Hahahaha, Good luck with that.
The only way this robot can lead a customer to an item is if that item is in it's correct place. Considering how these stores are actually run, it's becoming more and more often that the items simply aren't in their system recorded location. Either because the stockers are told to push everything out to keep the back rooms clean and empty, or because the people who set the locations are told to "approve" all location settings before the items are ever actually moved to those locations.
Please Sign into your shopping cart usage account. Click here to register of you do not have an account. Provide name, address, DOB, SSN#, and a credit card# for validation.... input a valid email for verification.
of the overweight, dozed off Americans, are quite bad, but this is taking it to a whole new level. Americans will now ride in their permobiles or electric scooter to Walmart, and then press a button so the cart drives by itself, because it's too much effort to push it while riding the permobil. America is right on track for the prophecy that was Wall-E.
So now those of us that are skinny enough to walk next to the fat people sitting in electric carts can have our own electric carts! Yay, equality!
500 pounds, reclining like Jabba the Hutt on a sofa while a robot shovels food into their maw
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
So yeah, the natural inclination is to say "Mericans fat! Lazy 'Mericans!", but if you've ever seen my wife trying to push our son in his wheelchair in front of her with one hand while simultaneously pulling a cart behind her with the other, you'd probably say, "Bet she should use a robotic cart."
If that's what it takes to replace the rusty, creaking contraptions at my local Walmart, than so be it. They do seem to have enough trouble maintaining the basic non-robotic kind, though.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Look kids.. I'm shopping in Xbox!
...to "Amazon" the regular store. The Amazon warehouse will be fully automated as soon as possible. Walmart is doing the same, but with retail.
This will insure they are not playing catch up to amazon, means they'll be able to offer automated same day shipping to any address, and not need to hire local idiots that call in sick, and complain about wages, or try and organize unions.
...it will end up broken in a corner. Shoppers will be forced to go back to the old way of doing things because Walmart won't provide the resources necessary to keep such a sophisticated system functional.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
They can't be too far away from automated stocking of shelves. It won't be too long until the only people that need to be present in the store are the customers...
How many of these will be found at the bus stop blocks away from the store? Will they be able to return home on their own?
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
This could cut down on shopping rage too. Personally, I get very frustrated at crowded stores whenever some asshat parks his cart in the middle of the aisle with no consideration for how it affects other people.
It would be great if people could just move about freely without their carts, while the carts negotiate routes amongst themselves and generally keep out of each other's way.
They would be better off adopting the four-wheel steering used in Ikea stores worldwide and everywhere in Europe and put actual fucking round wheels on the damn carts instead of what seem to be square stone wheels from a cave.
Clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk BANG -if you get a cart with four DIFFERENT squared wheels, you can really get some funky beats going.
And maybe the noise and racket from the cars bang-bang-banging their way through the store does kind of act like a sound beacon going beep-beep-beep on heavy equipment. So maybe it has some value.
But a robotic shopping cart? No way. Forget it. They will just be like the electric sit-down MartCarts already are: broken down from supporting way too many >500LB people and left out in the rain.
It's somewhat amusing how many people demand those MartCarts but when they go into a store and find out they either don't have any working carts or they've already all been taken out for use, then these people who demand such a cart still manage to go on and shop just fine without one. Some people just hate walking and would rather sit, that's all. They don't have an actual need for such a cart.
Sig for hire.
Using an elephant gun to kill a mouse.
All you really need is an app that combines your digital shopping list with location of items in the store with inventory and price info. No robot needed.
like pay some cheap labor to put proper meta-tags on the item pages and then FIX Their website search engine
it is currently impossible to reliably search on %item% By [price Low to High] with %available at #store#% and expect to see what you are looking for (the engine dumps itself and your search "matches" half the store)
Bubbles could do something pretty freakin' sweet with one of these mommas.
Perhaps it's the location that I go to. It's right next to a bus terminal and near a couple of major roads used by commuters. In other words, their customers are bound to be in a hurry. I'm also basing my assessment on where I see people in the store. For that location, milk is conveniently located and there is a lot of traffic in that part of the store. Motor oil is not conveniently located, but it doesn't seem to be an area that people frequent much either.
It's the location. Here in South Florida, Walmart seems to be on a warpath to make their stores clean, organized and streamlined. There is one just in front of my office, and it used to be a dark, unorganized and crappy store sporting some very unhappy (and at times dimwitted employers). One I would avoid like the plague.
The store (and others in the area) have been revamped. Stuff looks clean. Stuff is kept neat and organized, no longer in mounds at the base of aisles. Even the employees are very helpful. These stores are getting up to the level of organization one would expect at a well-run Target store...
My 10 year old was asking why self-driving shopping carts did not already exist(while he was pushing our heavy grocery cart) just the other day.
This wouldn't be happening if not for the raising minimum wage and Obamacare premiums for the manual shopping carts.
...of a shopping card being pushed down the aisle by a grotesquely wide robot sporting a leopard skin paint job.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The inventor of the robot cart has lost its child's mind a long time ago. Don't you remember how fun it was to push a cart?