How can retailers transform their store operations by deploying robots?

Find out how robots are contributing to retail transformation.

Having witnessed the exceptional potentiality of robotics in intra-logistics, it’s little wonder that robots have become increasingly popular within the retail sector. The retail giants Amazon and Walmart have already set a benchmark for retail transformation, with Amazon using Kiva Robots for automating picking and packing process at its warehouses and with Walmart deploying Bossa Nova’s robots to 1000 stores for carrying out inventory management, urging their rival firms and other small rental firms to employ robots in their stores. The retail robots are known to perform several functions such as spotting spillages, shelf analytics, inventory tracking, planogram compliance, and price accuracy.

“The global robotics market is estimated to reach USD 87 Billion by 2025. It is believed that more than half of this will be allocated for the retail market. This is not surprising, since retail has always been an early adopter of advanced technology”

-Boston Consulting Group

Understanding the need for robotics in retail

According to the Forter Global Merchant Network, from March 23 to March 30, 2020 e-commerce marketplaces saw a 14% increase in volume. Hence, it is evident that COVID-19 has accelerated the industry’s transformation in reaction to competitive pressures, the need to make the best use of human workers, and the desire for new and enhanced customer experiences.

Also, the sudden hike in online grocery demand has led to penetration of 9% currently and is likely to reach 12% by the end of the year, which implies that at the end of this crisis, one in ten people would have become habituated to buying their groceries online. This emphasizes the fact that the robots would prove beneficial to the retailers even after the pandemic is over.

However, even before the outbreak of COVID-19, retailers were under pressure to keep up with the rapidly changing market demands, evolving supply chains, and customer habits. These issues force both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce companies to implement robotic solutions in their stores. These robots can also be a way for retailers to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Also, millennials put a higher value on convenience and prefer faster, automated experiences over human interactions.

“In the aisle and in the back room of your local retail store, the robots are indeed coming to reduce costs and optimize operations.”

–Tony D’Onofrio, RETHINK retail advisor

Here are few statistics from the survey, sponsored by robotics and data service provider Bossa Nova and conducted by Wakefield Research, in December 2018, among 100 corporate retail professionals:

• 87% said inaccurate inventories are responsible for more lost revenue than theft
• 67% said analyzing inventory on store shelves is not an effective use of employees’ time
• 92% said their stores spend more time identifying inventory issues than they do implementing solutions
• 76% said the introduction of robots in stores would improve employee productivity

“Inventory accuracy is a never-ending challenge for retailers,”

-Martin Hitch, Bossa Nova co-founder and chief business officer.

Read on to find out about the robots that are actively contributing to retail transformation.

Retail Robots

1. MetraLabs GmbH’s TORY

TORY inventory robot, which is manufactured by the German-based MetraLabs GmbH, is being deployed to 40 stores of German clothing retailer ADLER Modemärkte AG after a three-year pilot. TORY can check inventory 10 times faster than humans, and can run for up to 18 hours without a recharge. It also scans RFID tags with a 99% capture rate. The company has developed optimized antennas and driving behaviors to ensure the same read rate even when the robot is placed in challenging tag locations.

TORY records the amount and position data and uploads it to inventory management systems. Depending on the RFID stock-taking, automatic reordering can be done or they can send alerts to mobile devices of the store employees. It is also equipped to deal with frequently changing store configurations. It remaps the area while performing a normal stock-taking run.

The duration of a complete run in a store by TORY depends on the store size, but it usually takes about four hours.

2. Badger technologies’ Marty

These nearly five foot tall robots, manufactured by retail automation company, Badger Technologies, have a characteristic non-threatening design and googly eyes that scan aisles to alert humans to food and beverage spills. When they detect something on the floor, they trigger an announcement over the store speaker to send a store employee to clean up the mess, reducing the risk of human injuries. Around 500 Marty robots were deployed by the grocery store conglomerate, Ahold Delhaize’s subsidiaries, which include Giant Foods, Martin’s and Stop and Shop supermarkets. It was reported that 172 Giant locations and 325 Stop & Shop stores in the U.S. have used Marty since January 2019 after successful trials. The robot uses English and Spanish to communicate with shoppers.

It was found that Marty spots around 40 spills in each store per day across 12 sessions at Stop & Shop.

3. Simbe Robotics’ Tally

Giant Eagle and Schnucks employed this tall, slender supermarket robot built by Simbe Robotics to monitor shelves. It alerts workers to out-of-stock items or other problems related to merchandising, such as products placed in the wrong location. The robot takes a pre-defined path around a store and transmits the collected data to the store employees, informing them when and where to restock goods. The employees received data from the robot every 30 minutes during the trial.

In 2017, Schnucks deployed Tally for a three-store pilot and then in October 2018, it used Tally in 15 stores. Later, during the fall of 2019, the brand integrated the shelf data with its mobile app to help customers find the products more easily.

4. Zebra technologies’ SmartSight EMA50

EMA50 mobile robot, designed by Zebra Technologies specializes in inventory management. The robot travels along store aisles looking for out-of-stock items, mismatched prices, and incorrect planogram setups. It is essentially different from other inventory-scanning systems as it is capable of generating corrective actions to store associates’ mobile computers and resolves issues in near real-time.

The robot uses technologies like machine learning and computer vision to spot problems such as low stock or pricing mistakes. Yet another compelling feature of SmartSight EMA50 is that it can be incorporated through a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model. Hence, retailers need not worry about things that could slow down their adoption rates, such as the cost of future repairs.

It was reported that the robot can increase available inventory by 95% and reduce manual inventory time by 65 hours per week.

5. Savioke’s Relay Robot

Brain Corp partnered with Savioke to build the Relay Robot. This robot, which has been used in concierge applications to deliver items in hotels, hospitals, and other indoor locations, was modified to add a tower unit that extends out of the top of its base for inventory scanning purposes. The compactness of the robot makes it more suitable for smaller stores that have narrower aisles. Apart from the inventory scanning cameras and sensors, the tower unit concept has a display that could be used by retailers for in-store advertisements or announcements.

6. Keonn Technologies' AdvanRobot

AdvanRobot, which is a mobile and autonomous RFID robot, developed by Keonn Technologies, automatically performs the inventory of retail stores. It provides an RFID inventory accuracy of 99.8% - 99.9%, higher than any other inventory system, which helps to reduce the cost of stock-taking. It also presents a 3 dimension planogram of the products, thus helping customers find the intended products, helping employees detect misplaced items, and speeding up picking and return management.

However, the robot needs initial movement input. An operator is expected to use a joystick to move the robot around the desired location and provide some guidance, after which it runs autonomously.

Impact on the human workforce

From the Oracle and Future Workplace report, conducted by TechCrunch in October 2019, which surveyed over 8,000 employees, managers, and human resources leaders from across 10 countries on AI and robots in the workplace, it was found that many employees who admitted they once feared AI would eliminate their jobs, changed their attitudes on learning that AI and robots could actually help them work more efficiently. The number of employees using AI at work increased by nearly 20 percent over the past year, from 32 percent to 50 percent.

According to the report, 64 percent of employees said they trust a robot more than their manager, with half of them approaching a robot instead of a supervisor for advice, as they believed that technology could provide unbiased information.

The goal is to assign mundane tasks to robots, leaving high-value jobs to human employees, like customer service. For instance, instead of spending time finding items on store shelves, employees could interact with customers to educate them about new products and, thereby boost sales. The motive behind deploying robots to retail stores is to augment human jobs rather than replace them.

It is becoming increasingly crucial to take initiative towards promoting retail transformation through robotic solutions as robots bring efficiency and create opportunities for their human counterparts to have more challenging work that uses humanity’s best skills–like passion‌‍, creativity, and interpersonal relationships. They also help tackle major issues in retail such as inventory management, changing market demands, planogram compliance, and spillages. The retailers feel compelled to transform their store operations in order to cut costs, reduce errors and maximize productivity and profitability, and most importantly, to gain a competitive edge over their rival retail firms.

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