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.

Comments

Re:Opposite

[Nidi62]

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.

Well, if it helps people find things on their list, it can also be programmed to take the customers on specific routes past target/impulse buy products. So if someone has on their list diapers it might take them past the baby clothes isle, or past the DVD section if someone is buying a new TV. Then of course there's the potential to inject "suggested purchases"(ads) in an attempt to push the customer into making even more purchases.

Occulus Rift's first useful application

[goombah99]

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.

Re:Occulus Rift's first useful application

[TigerPlish]

I dunno, man... I do most of my shopping online because I truly dislike the decline of retail. The sole exception is high-end goods in small stores.

So. On to the online bit: By carefully using the image zoom (if available), reading between the lines of the reviews (a lot of which are shills, some real, and some just rants), and cross-referencing with Google search results, one can make a reasonable guess at how good that product is.

It is very rare for me to get a sub-par, unexpectedly crappy product online. I usually either get exactly what I expected, or in some cases be blown away by how much better than expected it is.

The one thing I've ran into problems with is shoes: I've had more defects and more "damn it's too small" moments with shoes than with anything else.

Retail is dead. I savor every single stake I drive into it's bleeding heart. Wal-Mart destroyed the small retailer, then let's help Amazon take down Wal-mart.

We'll figure out how to take down Amazon and bring back the Main Street experience later on. This also needs to be done, Amazon is just as abusive as Wal-Mart, the difference is Amazon customers don't put up with the staff and customers.

What, no one remembers that? Life before the Big Boxes? What a shame. It was a nice experience. You had the guy that sold records, the girl who sold books, the old couple who ran the tailor's and dry-clean, the awesome electronics store where the tech in the back had a cigarette *and* a hot soldering iron on a glass ashtray..

We'll never get that back. And that makes my heart ache a bit.

Re:I need the Exercise thank you

[mrchaotica]

Have you never wondered just why those shelves are so far apart that you could easily fit three normal people in between?

It's so that carts being pushed in opposite directions can pass. You knew that, of course, but didn't say so because it ruins your joke.