Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by anindha » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 1:57 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #167

The immediate take away i get from this is that it really isn't about taking over human jobs. humans don't do this job nearly as frequently as the robots would do it, because in a standard retail environment like wal-mart, it doesn't really matter all that much if the reported in-stock quantity is slightly off for an item. that is to say, it matters, but not so much that the big-box retail environments i've worked in…

Stock levels are important for home delivery but this robot is also a logical first step for a fully fledged shelf packing robot.

If the current robot signals something is out of stock but a human determines the robot is incorrect then it means the store map is wrong or the product identification needs work. Once the error rate is low enough then full shelf packing can be implemented.

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

#192

Post by magnetic » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:07 AM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #151

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…

The offline world would then be on par with the online world when it comes to targeted pricing.

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

#193

Post by foobarian » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:26 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #187

Bromskloss wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If, at least, it could have been offensive!

They missed a perfect opportunity to give it legs and have it clomp around the aisles muttering "gonk... gonk..."

I see what they did there. Bossanova --> nova boss --> new overlord

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

#194

Post by drewmol » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:27 AM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #175

torgoguys wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite experience. Pretty much any store around here, Walmart included, the employees are very willing to help you find stuff, and if they don't know where something is, they will find or call to an employee that does know.

I am very impressed with folks at home improvement stores. I walk up, ask them where X is and they say 'ahhh, it should be over in aisle 17, towards the end past the Ys.'

Home depot lists aisle and bin numbers of inventory on their website once you've selected a local store as you're default store. After asking an employee and them pulling out their phone to check online for a products location, I've never had to ask an employee again. Surprised they don't advertise this on in store signage

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

#195

Post by dao- » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:28 AM UTC

racl101 wrote: post #165

jdietrich wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely get useful assistance in large chain stores. Asking "where is the pesto?" usually gets an answer like "I dunno, somewhere in aisle 7 maybe" with an indifferent shrug. I'd happily make three attempts at using a clunky voice interface if I got the answer "Aisle 7, bay 11, shelves 3 and 4. We have 18 different kinds of pesto currently in stock. Would you like me to take you there?" It almost seems too obvious t…

What's worse is that a lot of Walmart employees don't speak English. They can barely understand what you are saying, much less, conjure up a response. Usually they have to go and fetch a much smarter or knowledgeable person to help out. Terribly inefficient. So Walmart Employees, if this is you: I'm sorry but if you want to keep working at Walmart, time to step up your game, learn some English and be more responsive.…

So someone speaking English is "a much smarter or knowledgeable person" than someone who may have immigrated recently. Yeah, makes perfect sense.

> I'm sorry but if you want to keep working at Walmart, time to step up your game, learn some English and be more responsive.

I'm sorry but it's not your place to threaten Walmart employees. You'll have to leave that to Walmart management.

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

#196

Post by DougWebb » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:30 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #164

monk_e_boy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does raise the question of what jobs are worth saving? So a robot takes someones job, but it was a crappy job that they hated anyway. But they needed the money. Tough.

That is a generic end-of-work question. Ideally, everyone would have jobs they liked, and all the dull stuff would be automated (Star Trek outcome). Pessimistically, the machines will become better than humans at everything and we will just become obsolete (Terminator outcome). If automation picks up, we will have to deal with these questions sooner rather than later, but it will happen eventually.

Let's be optimistic and hope for the Wall-E outcome instead of the Terminator outcome. The robots will keep us around and take care of us as pets.

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

#197

Post by brianbreslin » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:36 AM UTC

This is letting them reduce theft. Shrinkage as its called in industry parlance is mostly caused by employees. Now you can make sure no inventory is mishandled. Walmart loses BILLIONS every year from just employee theft.

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

#198

Post by dbcurtis » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:37 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #167

The immediate take away i get from this is that it really isn't about taking over human jobs. humans don't do this job nearly as frequently as the robots would do it, because in a standard retail environment like wal-mart, it doesn't really matter all that much if the reported in-stock quantity is slightly off for an item. that is to say, it matters, but not so much that the big-box retail environments i've worked in…

Also consider that better inventory data allows better just-in-time inventory refill, increasing $/ft^2 inventory turnover and therefore total $ sales per store. I suspect this is about driving analytics with higher quality, more frequent data.

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

#199

Post by mistermann » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:45 AM UTC

anindha wrote: post #191

notatoad wrote: post #167

The immediate take away i get from this is that it really isn't about taking over human jobs. humans don't do this job nearly as frequently as the robots would do it, because in a standard retail environment like wal-mart, it doesn't really matter all that much if the reported in-stock quantity is slightly off for an item. that is to say, it matters, but not so much that the big-box retail environments i've worked in…

Stock levels are important for home delivery but this robot is also a logical first step for a fully fledged shelf packing robot. If the current robot signals something is out of stock but a human determines the robot is incorrect then it means the store map is wrong or the product identification needs work. Once the error rate is low enough then full shelf packing can be implemented.

Have you ever worked in a store like Walmart? Robots won't be stocking shelves without major(!!!) changes to how things are displayed.

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

#200

Post by eddz » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:49 AM UTC

> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers.

This is probably the most textbook spin I've ever seen. It's as if their PR firm didn't even try.

These robots are obviously being deployed to increase margins.

Personally I would have went for the "adding more value" angle, either by suggesting to the customer that "Your favourite product is more likely to be on shelves", or positioning these robots as "helpers" to shelf-stackers.