The Smart Retail Robot is here
The RoboTail is wagging!
Retail has been the hub of early-stage commerce. Over the ages, from Caravans across the desert paving the Silk Route with Gold to Spices and merchandise as aromas of tea created esoteric ambitions driving ambition, conquests, and discoveries of whole new continents. It spurred adventure and kindled Global understanding. That’s the power of commerce from the corner store to the Amazonian Cyber markets.
As Retail gets super competitive, and margins get squeezed across brick-and-mortar, online, and cross-channel competitors, e and retailers continue to rely on innovation and tech differentiators for survival. Post-COVID has pricked hyperinnovation in the food and retails space standardizing, e-commerce as the pandemic caused us to stay home and buy online with greater comfort and regularity. COVID seems to have shifted gears into the future from physical to digital shopping by over 4–6 years.
Robots, Artificial intelligence, deep learning, and Data-driven decision making is propelling retailers deeper into IoT and real-time robots to improve waste reduction, pilferage, and losses by the human inability to cope, have reshaped procurement and predictive modeling.
As innovation quickens, retailers need to become more agile to identify microtrends affecting buyer behavior to produce, distribute, and supply the goods and services that customers demand right now. The key to it all may very well be a robot roaming freely, bringing data from the consumer touchpoint in the store aisle into the data management system in the cloud, acting on a deep-seated whim, or a craving that one barely conceptualized, but materialized through data, spawned by our tacit behaviors.
“Retail robots are promising to free up workers from routine tasks, presumably giving humans more time for customer interaction. But that’s only the beginning of what robots will do. The real benefit of retail robots will be the opportunity to capture more granular data”
Robots have started to roam in outlets, from tall free-moving machines spotting spills in food stores to autonomous shelf-scanners checking inventory at Walmart. At Lowe’s, the home improvement chain, a “LoweBot” in some stores can answer simple questions, such as where to find items, and can assist with inventory monitoring. These robots free up workers from routine tasks, supposedly giving shoppers more time for customer interaction — that’s just the beginning.
Retail Robot Applications on the Horizon
As Robots enter the landscape of the retail industry, many other applications are being implemented today or are just around the corner. Many of these don’t include behind-the-scenes work as AMRs do — they typically involve engaging with customers “in-person”.
Potential robotic applications in retail include:
- Security and loss patrol
- Point of sale
- Customer engagement and entertainment
- Inventory management
- Cleaning and sanitizing
- Traffic measuring
- Facial recognition and loyalty
While there are many ways that robots can be used in retail, these solutions often require autonomous robots that can safely navigate a store while performing other tasks to facilitate sales within the store.
While robotic applications in retail are still in their infancy, robots promise to transform retail forever, ushering in higher levels of efficiency and autonomy.
While robots from Smart Robotics a Madrid based multi-talented Robots help in automating mundane tasks like cleaning (at low footfall times), they measure Fruit and veggie freshness, optimize inventory purchasing, and also aid customers to find product sending back signals on “consumer demands” to identify local and global trends and merge the two. The potential of retail robots is the massive opportunity to capture granular data-points about the products on the shelves and consumer buying patterns, which can increase efficiency and optimizes the intelligence quotients added to the mix of inventory management.
Another big upside of retail robots as data-collectors in tandem with internet-of-things (IoT), creates a complex network of connected devices, objects, and sensors gathering voluminous data that is analyzed edge computing. It lowers latency, driving decisions in manufacturing to transportation, and now retail. IoT helps drive the intelligent digital ecosystem combined with the advanced capabilities of AI, Deep and machine learning.
Robots and IoT ubiquitously create the critical mass that delivers on the promise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to change how we live, work, conduct business, and purchase the goods and services we want and need as the post COVID economy opens its doors to a new dawn of the next Gen-driven by hyperinnovation.
Auchan Retail Portugal, a European grocery giant, is launching autonomous shelf-monitoring robots, in its hypermarkets. As robots move around the stores, they capture pictures of every shelf and aisle, that are then digitized, and spit out metrics and insights about out-of-stock merchandise and pricing.
Perishable goods can be identified and repurposed and ordered based on demand to reduce Global food wastage and drive data-led farming or fishing across continental tracts of acquired land that the Arabian Gulf countries rely on for their food sources.
Predicting consumer demand is now deemed essential. Stitch Fix, which provides clothing choices to shoppers at home, uses data science in many facets of its business model. It starts with product recommendations to inventory and fashion. Traditional retailers, relying on tracking what consumers purchase does not paint the entire potential. The real competitive advantage for retailers comes in knowing what they couldn’t purchase but wanted to. That’s where robots in the aisles step in.
Data-feeding Robots
Robots in stores gather data based on what is — and is not — on the shelves. The real-time continuous scans provide a holistic view of customers’ retail experiences. Just as shelf inventories reveal what’s in stock in ample quantities, what’s drying up in supply, and what’s out-of-stock — all of which indicate consumer preferences and prompt positive corrective action.
In a not too distant hypothetical scenario, a retail robot such as that from Smart Robotics being test-driven in Spain as we speak, it would scan grocery store aisles and report that supplies of Gluten-free Bread is disappearing at twice the rate of regular White or Brown bread. That real-time feedback would trigger a straight-through order process for additional Gluten-free bread to be replenished at a specific outlet. By detecting seasonal or event-based shifts in inventory, the robot would be able to respond quickly without human intervention. That’s not unlike what happens in high-frequency stock markets trading, which uses algorithms to detect and capitalize on small, shifts in stock prices off-the-radar tickers, which aggregate accrual of sizeable profits over time.
Just sidestepping inventory traps could lead to out-of-stocks, that has a price tag of over $1 trillion worldwide, according to industry estimates. Add to that lost opportunities and customers who are disappointed by out-of-stocks, which could lead to diminished loyalty.
The early days of Covid saw essentials like toilet paper, sanitizers, and cleaning supplies run into widespread out-of-stocks. Retailers tried to “manage” the demand by limiting purchases but still ran into empty shelves. If retailers had been able to get an early warning of mass purchases of products such as toilet paper, or a robot in the aisle had detected an unexpected decline in toilet paper supplies, that could have led to better inventory management driving increased shipments from warehouses and limits on purchases to contain hoarding.
Just Retail, or is that the tipping point?
Robotics arms and manufacturing in Auto and car makers assembly lines that lift heavy items in warehouses have been around for a while. In travel and some Hotels, robots acting as Digital concierges carry luggage accurately and efficiently and also increasing the “cute factor”. A Thailand restaurant boasts Robots for staff, and Robots have rolled into hospitals as COVID hysteria and human shortages loomed entered with non-surgical lower-end jobs such as sanitizing corridors and rooms and delivering supplies, including blood samples to be tested in the lab. Autonomous robotic cleaners are also making their way into commercial spaces and homes from office buildings to airports.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that there were 42,790 retail employee injuries in 2018 due to overexertion. Thus, by automating time-intensive tasks such as checking stock, moving inventory, and cleaning works, among others, grocery retailers can navigate any business problems and reduce staff workloads.
Robots in retail have mostly worked behind the scenes. For example, Amazon uses robots in its delivery centers to improve efficiency as well as safety (robots can’t get hurt moving heavy pallets); Amazon says robots have helped it store 40% more inventory in its centers. Meanwhile, Kroger, the grocery retailer in the U.S., is launching a network of automated warehouses that use robotics and digital technology to improve its ability to meet customer demands.
The Robots are coming!
The question of how it will impact and replace jobs at the turn of every industrial revolution has been answered. Simply put, every revolution has ushered a better quality of life and mass globalization with mass production increasing scale and reducing costs, and augmenting human lives in the medium to longer-term. If it's enhancing the human paradigm and spurring positive economic activity-Why not?
