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Back in 2017, Walmart started testing the fully autonomous bots made by Bossa Nova Robotics in around 50 stores. They can scan multiple items at a time, and much like self-driving cars, use 3D imaging to dodge obstacles, while keeping track of areas that need to be revisited.The idea was that they’d check stock levels, pricing and misplaced items, relieving the load on human staff and reducing labor costs.
However, as COVID-19 lockdowns shifted sales online, Walmart found that workers collecting online deliveries from shelves could also gather inventory data. Now, Walmart plans to use those folks to monitor levels and locations, essentially making the robots redundant (and proving that turnabout is fair play). On top of that, CEO John Furner was concerned about how shoppers might react and interact with robots in stores.
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Poor robos. Won't be able to feed batteries to their little roombas at home. In seriousness just wanting to highlight how sometimes just because a technology exists and can do the job, it's not always more cost effective than paying humans. Tesla had issues with their Model 3 production, and even the techie wonderboy Musk admitted that part of the slowup was due to them being overly reliant on robots in the assembly process, and that more actual workers on the front line would have been more efficient and cost effective in hindsight.
