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Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

businessinsider.com

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Re: Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

#151

Post by cr0sh »

kristofferR wrote: post #65

Judging from the pictures they'll still use paper price labels. Why? It seems extremely arcane to still use paper price labels in 2017, especially for stores as big and centrally run as Walmart. With digital price labels you can update prices centrally across the whole country within seconds, and it costs basically nothing to implement too, when the labor cost of manually updating paper price labels are factored in.

Imagine if you got your wish (actually, at Kohls it is like this, last time I was there).

Now imagine thru some method, they could tell which shopper was nearby shelves, looking - and who they were. Do a instant credit check lookup (perhaps with something special with the credit bureaus that don't put a ding on the report), to find out what that nearby shopper is "worth".

Then instantly change the prices in that one area of the store - perhaps to gain just a few more pennies from a wealthy customer, or maybe (perhaps) to try to steer a customer to a particular brand who has paid the store for this purpose (by changing the prices of other brands to be higher, so that the buyer might go for the lower priced item if they are on a lower economic rung - or vice-versa to get them to buy a higher-cost item for perceived "luxury").

This would be easily possible with today's technology. It wouldn't be cheap to implement, and likely the back-end systems are so f-d up that it would take a revamp or a lot of work to get everything talking together properly, plus the attendant tech to recognize shoppers (cell phone IMEI? facial rec? something)...

...but I am certain that if the profit motive was there, and it offset those costs, it would be done. And Walmart would likely do it, too.

Re: Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

#152

Post by billmalarky »

dctoedt wrote: post #16
irl_zebra wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you refuse to use the self checkout?

Can't answer for GP, but I use human checkout to provide epsilon demand for cashiers who need the job. Efficiency isn't everything.

I like your use of "epsilon." I have a lot of little rules I like to follow, like the Nestle boycott, that are just drops in the bucket. But it's nice to have a set of personal standards to follow even if they are inconsequential at scale.

I'll be using epsilon to describe these quirks from now on :-)

Re: Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

#153

Post by maxerickson »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #116
maxerickson wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you go down this rabbit hole? How do you pick between buying wheat and taking it to the miller (preserving his job) and buying flour from the grocer? Do you seek out gas stations that still pump gas for you? Do you worry that buying a fuel efficient vehicle or insulated building can have a negative impact on people working for energy producers?

>Do you go down this rabbit hole? What requires me to go all the way down the rabbit hole? Everybody has moral beliefs that they don't follow to their extremist conclusions. I see people getting laid off or turnover being allowed to happen - I see that the replacement job for a cashier gig is sometimes even worse - I do my little part to make society a little less bad. I also don't feel that pure individualism is rea…

My comment is sassy, but I really was curious about the answer to the question.

Re: Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

#155

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

JSONwebtoken wrote: post #72
phyzome wrote: post #66

> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers. ...which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots taking our jobs" angle here. If they consider the current level at which employees help customers in the aisles sufficient, then they'll be cutting jobs to match that level rather than "freeing up" employees to do more of it.

For the foreseable future, robots and chatbots will be poorer UX than speaking to a human. Since it's not adding value to their product it's obviously being done for cost cutting and scale reasons.

AKA perfectly reasonable economic reasons.

Re: Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

#156

Post by cr0sh »

zanny wrote: post #48
timthelion wrote: post #17

It seems interesting to me, that computers seem to be taking on managerial roles and humans are left with manual labor. The robot knows how to tell a human to fix a problem but doesn't know how to restock the shelves itself. Similarly, in warehouses, computers tell humans what to do, and the human's job is basically just to grab things. In the end, the robot is already higher on the ladder than the humans.

Its not that we cannot build robots that restock shelves, it is that shelves are designed for humans to stock. And emulating the range of movement and dexterity of human hands and the sensory data we get when interacting with such shelves is really expensive, rather than prohibitive. Especially to maintain. Think of all the fine motor joints you would need in such a robot that could break all the time (like how fragi…

It'd probably be better to design standard packaging and automated shelving systems that could be easier for robots to stock. Even better? Make the shelves robots themselves, so they could re-arrange themselves as needed, and go and "fill up" for stocking in the back, etc...

Re: Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

#157

Post by linkregister »

timthelion wrote: post #115
ronilan wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Near my house, 4 red octagons with a simple white drawing command humans to stop and cooperate.

I don't understand what you mean.

Stop sign. I don’t think it’s a good analogy.

Re: Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

#158

Post by RKearney »

JSONwebtoken wrote: post #72
phyzome wrote: post #66

> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers. ...which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots taking our jobs" angle here. If they consider the current level at which employees help customers in the aisles sufficient, then they'll be cutting jobs to match that level rather than "freeing up" employees to do more of it.

For the foreseable future, robots and chatbots will be poorer UX than speaking to a human. Since it's not adding value to their product it's obviously being done for cost cutting and scale reasons.

Sure, you think that, but the last two times I went to Walmart and needed help finding something, the first person I went to at each store didn't speak any English at all. This was in the middle of Tennessee, not Texas or Miami.

Re: Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

#159

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

phyzome wrote: post #66

> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers. ...which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots taking our jobs" angle here. If they consider the current level at which employees help customers in the aisles sufficient, then they'll be cutting jobs to match that level rather than "freeing up" employees to do more of it.

On the other hand, Walmart is certainly feeling the pressure from Amazon and improving customer interaction is likely high on their strategic radar. To wit: AMZN revenue +33% to a $170 Billion run rate, vs. WMT revenue virtually unchanged over the last 4 years at $485 Billion. Walmart recently introduced their own version of Prime, and AMZN is now in the grocery business, two more differentiators that have been closed off between the two.

It doesn't take too many 30% years to go from $170 to $485 Billion (not that they'll continue at that pace, but shit, this is year 23 for AMZN, and their growth is still incredible, [AWS, AWS, AWS]).

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