
Stop and Shop now has big, goofy-looking robots patrolling its aisles - scott_s
https://newfoodeconomy.org/supermarket-robot-automation-ai-organized-labor-stop-and-shop/
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nvrspyx
I was in BevMo a few weeks back and there was a similar robot. It had a screen
on the front to look up what you’re searching for and it would bring you to
it.

I decided to give it a try since I was trying to find watermelon flavored
liquor for the SO. I found some pre-mixed watermelon margarita on the screen
and then it proceeded to bring me to the right spot....or at least it tried.

On the way to the aisle and shelf, it clipped the corner of a chest-height
shelf rack knocking over a ton of whiskey on the top shelf shattering on the
ground.

It was seemingly unphased by hitting the shelf, but right after ran straight
into a ceiling height rack of shelves knocking over bottles of tequila.

It just stayed there with its face buried in the shelves and simply said, “Can
I help you find anything else?”, despite not being where the pre-mixed
margaritas were.

There was a single employee there working the register. When the whiskey
crashed, everyone in the store just watched and then when it crashed into the
tequila, the employee looked at the mess from behind the register, sighed, and
then just continued ringing people up. This clearly wasn’t the first time
she’s witnessed this thing make absolute chaos.

I’ve yet to go back to BevMo since then, but I imagine they’ve gotten rid of
it.

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dougk16
We have one in our local Stop and Shop. It has a creepy smiley face plastered
on it. It's easy to say that it's super weird and suspicious, gets in your
way, likely not cost-effective (at least for its ostensible purposes, who
knows what slimey face tracking or whatever it might be doing), which is all
true.

But on a slightly positive note, my kids 5 and 7 love it. They pretend like
it's a killer robot chasing us, which it oddly does seem to do. No matter
where we go in the store it's always popping up around the corner. They play
hide and seek with it, try to surprise it, hunt it down. Good training for
Judgement Day. ;)

~~~
spookware
Does it have an e-stop? Can you hit the e-stop?

~~~
dougk16
Not sure what you mean. Emergency Stop? I know it's bumped/tripped my kids on
a few occasions, but they were asking for it. :)

~~~
spookware
It should have a big e-stop on the robot. This is to insure that if it runs
over kids or malfunctions then you can shut it down.

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function_seven
If you work for a public company, you have the ability to get the Real Deal on
their plans.

From TFA:

> Although Jennifer Brogan, Stop & Shop’s director of external communications,
> assured New Food Economy that the robot is not meant to replace workers,
> _Ahold Delieze has explicitly told shareholders that the company is
> investing in automation and artificial intelligence to supplement or even
> replace human labor._

Management lies to employees all the time about future plans, staffing levels,
job roles, etc. But they can't lie to their investors. (Or, they usually share
the worker-hostile plans more easily)

So if you're curious about your company, dial into the earnings calls, read
the investor relations press releases, etc. That's where you'll get the better
info.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I don’t think one needs to do all of that to understand that people prefer to
spend less money than more money for the same thing. If you’re not expecting
your employer to be looking into ways to reduce costs, just like everyone
tries to reduce costs in their personal life, then I would say you’re
intentionally oblivious to reality.

~~~
simongr3dal
Depends. A business can be focused on creating value for its shareholders and
owners, or it can be focused on creating value for its employees and owners.

If you don't view the purpose of a business as needing to extract and funnel
wealth upwards it doesn't need to come down to spending more vs spending less,
spending more might even further the goal of the business if you view its
purpose as creating jobs for people.

Essentially, it is possible to consider employees as an asset instead of a
fungible commodity.

~~~
lotsofpulp
In a low margin commodity business, such as retail and grocery stores (that
don’t cater to top 10% by wealth), it absolutely does come down to spending
less.

Proof is the success of Walmart, Amazon, Aldi, Costco, Dollar General etc.
Customers don’t care about anything but buying goods at the lowest price.

~~~
function_seven
This is a great example of how cost cutting doesn't always mean rock bottom
wages. Costco and Sam's Club are good comps. Yet they're way different when it
comes to their workforce strategy:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/06/wage...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/06/wage_against_the_machine.html)

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mikepurvis
The long game is probably a litany of other vision-based tasks including
things like stock management. Not knowing what is even on their shelves is a
huge issue for retail— having oversupply is wasteful and can result in
spoilage, and undersupply means lost business and unhappy customers.

Note that there are other companies getting into this space:

[http://pal-robotics.com/en/products/stockbot/](http://pal-
robotics.com/en/products/stockbot/)

[https://shelfierobot.com/](https://shelfierobot.com/)

~~~
sureaboutthis
In fact, that's exactly the purpose of the one in our local grocery chain's
stores (Schnuck's in St. Louis). It scans the shelves for inventory.

It's not as big as the one shown in the article and I don't see it all day,
every day, though I wonder if I've just gotten used to seeing it and now am
blind to it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZBeV4hHAak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZBeV4hHAak)

~~~
mikepurvis
Thanks, Tally was the one I was missing. Too late to edit the post, but yeah:
[https://www.simberobotics.com/](https://www.simberobotics.com/)

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onemoresoop
"We are partnering on technologies that are not only helping us make the
customer experience even more personal and relevant but also operate more
efficiently and manage labor shortages in our markets"

That's laughable. I wonder what's the top management's perception of working
on the floor. From the article it seems that this robot is practically useless
(glorified Roomba that doesn't vacuum) and am sure the management has a
different plan in mind.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I walked into my local bank branch last week and couldn't find a withdrawal
slip. One of my vendors only accepts cash or check. I haven't used paper
checks in years and the ATM only dispenses $20's: I hate carrying a thick
stack of bills.

All the slips had been removed from their usual place so I walked up to a
teller to explain the situation. He said, "oh, we implemented a new paperless
system." And then pulled out a withdrawal slip and filled it out for me.

Me: "soooo, your new paperless system is paperless only for me I guess?"

Him: "yeah, I guess they figured we needed something to keep us busy."

So yeah, I can totally believe that management's perception is completely
disconnected from reality.

~~~
teilo
I forgot this was even a thing. Whenever I need large bills to buy something
on Craigslist, I just walk up to the teller, give her my ID and Debit card,
and ask for what I want. And that's just a normal bank, not a credit union.

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jasonjayr
It's mentioned in the article

Direct link to the company behind it:

[https://www.badger-technologies.com/](https://www.badger-technologies.com/)

It seems like the primary focus of this device is inventory + planogram
management. That it can also scan for spills + messes seems like an
afterthought.

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fatnoah
You know what would be better? 2 more checkout aisles open. The ridiculous
amount of time it takes to check out is the #1 reason I avoid that chain. It's
not unusual to have to wait 10+ minutes to checkout because only 1 or 2 of the
15 checkout lanes are open.

~~~
smacktoward
But that would mean having to hire more checkers, and no ambitious mid-level
executive is going to get a promotion from doing something as mundane as
hiring more checkers. (It may actually be the _opposite_ of a career enhancer.
"Hey, our expenses went up .37% last month! Find me the person who's
responsible so I can fire him!")

"Deployed and managed a fleet of autonomous robots", on the other hand, looks
much sexier on the résumé. _That_ executive is on the fast track to the
C-suite.

~~~
stevenhubertron
OpEx vs CapEx

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zaroth
I can’t for the life of me understand how vision related tasks should be done
by _roving_ versus fixed cameras.

Even if you need higher resolution than you can get from a wide field of view,
a fixed camera that can pan and zoom then?

The only thing I can think of is there’s zero upfront installation cost, no
need for a crew to _wire_ anything. Ship the robot, plug in the charging
station, and it’s off?

Maybe the ancillary reduction in shoplifting, even if it’s not actually
designed to monitor that, pays for the robot.

~~~
tomatotomato37
Dense shelving can have a lot of blindspots, that's one of the reason those
Amazon stores are absolutely plastered in ceiling cameras; that being said 700
CCTV cameras would probably still end up cheaper than the proprietary robotics
system it seems they are using now

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ineedasername
I have one near me. It's intrusive & annoying, often blocking aisles and
getting in a customer's way in a more dangerous fashion than the situations
it's supposed to detect.

~~~
anoonmoose
I also have one near me. I don't find it intrusive or annoying, and while it
may get in a customer's way now and then I do not consider it dangerous in the
least. I often find it sitting in front of a spill of some sort in produce
trying to page a worker to come clean whatever it is.

~~~
jfk13
Are spills _so_ common in grocery stores that this is really worthwhile? Sure,
I've seen spills, and staff cleaning them up; I've even reported a spill to
staff when it didn't seem to have been noticed yet. But it's hardly an
everyday occurrence, in my experience.

~~~
mustacheemperor
When this robot was added to my hometown's grocery store my family was
similarly mystified discussing it, but my father is an insurance professional
and said it's a really serious liability expense for grocery stores to manage
spills. People who slip and fall on legitimate accidental spills that weren't
attended to promptly will sue the grocery, and there are people who will
create spills to self inflict injuries for the same reason. His opinion was
this kind of oversight is a no brainer for a grocery to reduce the liability
overhead, but we also couldn't determine why that's better accomplished with a
robot than cameras in the ceiling. Maybe to reduce perceived "big brother"
vibes?

Edit: I don't think your comment should be downvoted below the fold, because I
think it's pretty natural for people unfamiliar with the operation of a
grocery store to have a knee-jerk skeptical reaction to putting a robot in one

~~~
ineedasername
I can see how this could, theoretically, help manage spills and related
injuries. However, at least the one near me is so slow. It would take hours
for it to do a round of the store. It spends most it's time standing still in
an attempt to not get in the way of passing shoppers. I'd think that having a
stock clerk make a round of the store every 45 or hour would work much better.
A brisk walk across the top of the aisles, looking down them for spills,
wouldn't take more than a few minutes.

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smashd
I work for a company that's in a partnership with Ahold Delhaize. While we
were doing some in-store tests of our software product with them over a year
ago, the topic of the robots came up. As they say in the article, the main
purpose really is just to scan for spills and obstructions. That being said, I
believe the primary driver is insurance-related. The stores are required (or
perhaps given a discount as incentive) by liability insurance providers to
regularly check the aisles for fall hazards, and the required sweep frequency
is pretty high. In a big enough store you'd probably need to dedicate someone
to it full-time--I guess in this case they opted for a googly-eyed robot.

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crispyambulance
It's like a giant "Clippy" following you around and doing nothing other than
being annoying and intrusive.

I don't need these in my life!

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rishabhsagar
Am I missing the point somehow? Why is this not implemented as a series of
super high def camera disguised as surveillance cctvs? They could spot spills
just as effectively, no?

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Mizza
> “It’s really not doing much of anything besides getting in the way,” said
> Kristen. She complained that the robot pages the store nearly constantly,
> over the smallest things—like a stem from a bunch of grapes—and it will go
> around in circles until an employee comes to clean the “hazard” up. “Right
> now he’s a glorified Roomba and he doesn’t even vacuum.”

Market opportunity spotted - are there industrial Roombas for retail spaces?
Even better if they can do outdoor sidewalks.

~~~
cr0sh
> Market opportunity spotted - are there industrial Roombas for retail spaces?
> Even better if they can do outdoor sidewalks.

It would have to work much better than a Roomba. Random cleaning won't cut it,
it would have to be done in a methodical fashion.

Could such robots be built, and be made safe and effective. Probably. But the
price point is going to probably kill it.

Think about it - this thing costs $35K USD - now you want to make it sweep
things up and do it in practical manner, etc - that price is going to rise
significantly.

But - if you can do it, and keep the price low - then you might have a chance.

It's definitely a space I'd love to explore, but I'm not a businessperson or a
real entrepreneur (I definitely probably have all the parts needed to build
such a robot in my shop, though - including more than a few old Roombas to
boot).

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I_am_neo
Marty sounds like a big waste of money to me. At the very least they should
have made it able to sweep or vacuum up what it finds on the floor.

~~~
blcknight
Slip & fall claims are a big liability for stores like Stop & Shop. One
avoided per year pays for Marty.

~~~
onemoresoop
Marty seems to be unreliable and produce a lot of false alarms. At some point
crying wolf won't be taken seriously anymore and Marty's warnings will be
ignored.

An alternative to this is to hire a person to babysit Marty, follow him around
the store and whenever there's a real spill to clean it up for him. /s

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noonespecial
Wouldn't a few HD cameras on the ceiling and OpenCV be as effective at 10x
less cost without getting in everyone's way?

~~~
icebraining
That's what I was thinking. Seems like they will want to expand the
capabilities, though, and that may be hard to do from ceiling cameras.

~~~
VectorLock
It makes natural sense for the robot to move from identifying spills to
cleaning them up. Lots of people say "well somebody just sees a spill and
sends a human to clean them up" which doesn't work when the first person to
detect the spill is the old lady who slips in it and breaks her hip.

~~~
jfk13
If Marty is roaming the aisles at a reasonable speed (i.e. not so fast as to
endanger shoppers!), there's still a substantial chance that the first
"person" to detect any given spill is the elderly person with the fragile hip,
while Marty ambles around the other side of the store.

So how many robots are needed per store if they're to have more effective
coverage than asking the employees who roam the aisles tidying and re-stocking
shelves, helping customers find things, fulfilling click-and-collect orders,
etc., to also report spills?

Or perhaps these stores don't have any such employees on the floor -- they're
just an array of unserviced aisles, with some staff at the checkouts?

~~~
VectorLock
>If Marty is roaming the aisles at a reasonable speed (i.e. not so fast as to
endanger shoppers!), there's still a substantial chance

Still substantial but less than without it.

Most of the restocking and cleaning happens when the store is closed.
Customers don't want to have people getting in their way stocking shelves and
you don't want to be mopping floors (other than cleaning up spills) when
customers are walking down them.

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cr0sh
I'd like to know how the company behind the robot manages to get away with
charging the cost of a small car for this glorified Roomba with a stick.

I must be in the wrong line of work or something...

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squarefoot
Shoplifting aside, I am pretty sure those big funny eyes came after a meeting
where they discussed how to keep the robot appearance on the right side of the
uncanny valley.

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flexer2
This seems like a waste of money on the surface. The concerns over privacy
seem a little silly given the hundreds of CCTV cameras that monitor the stores
already, though.

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mdorazio
Ok, this article is kind of all over the place and seems to miss several
things worth mentioning.

1) It's pretty obvious that the responsibilities of the robots right now are
just in a proof of concept phase. I can pretty much guarantee they will be
used for additional tasks once the test period ends and some software bugs get
worked out. Tasks like (as the article mentions) price checking, stock
checking, misplaced item identification, etc. that take up a lot of employee
time.

2) Customers concerned about privacy because the robots have cameras seem kind
of out of touch. Ever been to Walmart and looked up? There are cameras
everywhere, recording all the time and I haven't seen anyone complain that
it's creepy they're being watched (and recorded) by people in a security
office. The only difference with the robots is that they're more noticeable,
so people are suddenly _aware_ that they're being recorded.

3) The article mentions organized labor, employee opposition to the robots,
and profits, but doesn't actually connect the dots. Here's the thing about
capitalism and automation: the more you raise salaries and improve working
conditions, the more incentive there is for companies to automate jobs. That's
basic cost-benefit analysis and margin-based thinking. If automating a job
costs X and human workers currently make Y, but want Y to be greater than X,
guess what? Those jobs aren't going to last very long.

~~~
nerdponx
#3 is missed by too many people. We need to start seriously considering what a
"post-work" economy might look like, and we need to start drumming up the
political will for the massive income redistribution that will be necessary.

~~~
mruts
I mean, employment is at an all timr low. People have been predicting a post-
work economy for over a hundred years at this point. There’s not and never
will be a post-work economy.

~~~
nerdponx
We've been moving towards it for about as long as people have been predicting
it. It's been happening in fits and starts, but it's been happening. I suspect
that the rise of the "gig economy" is due in part to the fact that there is so
much less _necessary_ manpower required to keep society running. So the only
work left is to cater to the desires of the rich and/or lazy.

