Store clerks could soon be spending more of their time monitoring stock replenishment and less time assisting customers, thanks to robots.
The partnership between Pepper — a humanoid robot that answers customers questions in a retail environment, and Tally, an autonomous shelf auditing and analytics solution designed to ensure retailers that merchandise is always stocked in the right place and correctly priced — took center stage during a session on retail robots during the recent CES show in Las Vegas.
The session, which was part of the High-Tech Retailing Summit on CES Day 2, began with moderator Manolo Almagro, managing partner at Q Division, a consultancy, conducting an interview with Claudia, a cloud based virtual avatar, who appeared live via a wall mounted video screen.
Robot audits the shelves. Panelist Brad Bogolea, co-founder and CEO of Simbe Robotics, then introduced Tally, whom he called the world’s leading shelf automation robot, and a product that “will be industry changing for sure.”
Panelist Steve Carlin, chief strategy officer at Softbank Robotics America, maker of Pepper, was quick to credit Tally with playing an important support role to Pepper, who assists customers by answering their questions.
“We’ll connect Pepper to Tally, we’ll be able to say such and such an item is actually on the shelf, it’s on aisle five at such and such a price,” said Carlin. Tally is designed to avoid a busy aisle and go elsewhere and return later, Bogolea said. He said it will also alert customers of its presence in the store environment. While Tally does not interact with shoppers, it does provide staff information they need to stock shelves during store hours. Tally understands where products are on the shelf.
Bogolea also said Tally was physically designed to reduce the fear most consumers have about robots. “It’s important for us to take human and robot interaction quite seriously from a design perspective,” he said. “Nobody wants big scary robots in places like retail stores.”
