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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

#271

Post by 52804375092485 »

douglaswlance wrote: post #254
QuadrupleA wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You jest, but I actually wonder sometimes if this type of thing would be better for society. The dream of automation and technology was always to "let the machines do the work so we're free to enjoy life and pursue our dreams" but in a capitalist economy it ends up benefiting the owners of the machines primarily, like Walmart and Amazon, not necessarily society at large (though obviously they enable people to buy thi…

Anyone can own machines. Go buy one. Automate some stuff. Make some money. Stop being a stick in the mud and get with it.

You know a huge portion of the American population is living paycheck to paycheck with no savings right? Most people can't "just" buy a robot and magically join the capitalist class.

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

#272

Post by pattle »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #125
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.

>it costs basically nothing to implement too, Eh. Don't be so sure of this. Yes, this technology exists. No, it's typically not feasible to implement. The ROI simply doesn't make sense. Each store houses about 250,000 unique products. That means you'll need that many digital price tags. If they're $4 a peice (highly unlikely), thats 1M per store - and that's only in the new hardware. You also need to test different e…

It would be a huge waste of money because I think the need for electronic price tags will be obsolete in around 5 years max.

I think soon a lot of supermarkets will do same day delivery so you order your food during the day and it gets delivered to you at home the same evening. Or they may implement a system where you order online and you've given a collection time.

Either way going into a supermarket and browsing up and down the isles will become less and less popular so it wouldn't make sense for supermarkets to invest in electronic price tags. I don't know for sure but that's how I see it going.

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

#273

Post by seanmcdirmid »

freehunter wrote: post #228
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm, if we create robots better than us, they are our legacy, our homo superious, why should Homo sapiens continue? You don't see Neanderthals running around today for a good reason.

It’s easy to look back fondly on genocides that have already happened. No one shed a tear for the long lost Neanderthals. The Estruscans were wiped out by the Romans with almost no recorded history left behind. Native Americans, First Nations, and Aborigines suffered horribly at European hands, but we never entertain the idea of moving back to the Old World. Things are different for genocide that hasn’t happened yet.…

It wasn’t necessarily genocide in the Neanderthal case, just basic species out competition. Yes, many people today are trying to “save the panda” even though it is quite non adaptable, but if the pandas go extinct because they cannot compete for the resources they once monopolized, that isn’t genocide.

At least in my mind, genocide is unnatural.

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

#274

Post by criddell »

rconti wrote: post #91
criddell wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Austin, TX and I can buy booze in self-checkout, as long as it isn't Sunday morning.

Do they scan your ID? If not, I'm surprised someone hasn't come knocking about this...

No. There's one attendant for the group of machines and as soon as the 'enter birthdate' pompt appears on the screen, it gets cleared. I think the attendant is just watching and I'm clearly over 21. It usually is cleared so quickly I don't see it.

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

#275

Post by ilaksh »

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…

It only checks inventory at this point because there are no robots that exist that are capable of doing the rest of it safely and effectively such as stocking the shelves in those uncontrolled dynamic environments.

When they get more capable robots, they will replace more jobs.

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

#276

Post by ilaksh »

guelo wrote: post #185
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.

Item location could be provided by a phone app today. My feeling is that they don't do it because they don't want you to know the exact location because they want you to browse the aisles in hopes that you'll throw something into your cart that you weren't planning to. Same reason that supermarkets put milk and eggs at the farthest corner away from the door.

The Home Depot app is how I find everything when I go there. I think the other stores didn't do it yet because the isles and bays in most stores don't have visible numbers. And without that they need to wait a few years for deployed internal location technology to improve a bit.

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

#277

Post by ilaksh »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #147
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…

Part of this has to do with demographics. We prefer to deal with robots and order stuff on web interfaces. I was talking with my aunt and uncle the other day. They were telling me that they prefer to bring their paper checks to the bank and interact with the teller rather than scan it in the app from the comfort of their home. That blew my mind. I think there's a huge age gap when it comes to preference for human vs…

It's not really human vs mechanical in the teller example despite what they say. They are just keeping their long running habit rather than having to learn how to scan it on their phone which is work and risking that their money will disappear.

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

#279

Post by ilaksh »

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.…

What's actually happening is a combination of the fact that that they are probably in the middle of stocking and/or immediately detect your racism and arrogance and inability to get to the point and realize they need a supervisor to deal with you.

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

#280

Post by johnvega »

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…

Relatively more real-time big data, AI/ML or at least sophisticated algorithms to detect or even predict shoplifting.
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