Dell Technologies
Pragati Verma
August 2018
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Every day, sleek tower-like autonomous robots with two blinking eyes roll down the aisles at several family-owned supermarkets, Schnucks, based in Missouri. Called Tally, the 62-inch robot looks for out-of-stock, misplaced, mislabeled, and incorrectly priced items, safely navigating store aisles among customers and associates.
Whenever Tally finds the store is running low on an item, it quickly informs employees to restock the shelves. The robot can detect people and objects, such as boxes, shopping carts, and shoppers in its way. If it sees a shopper in its path, it waits for them to pass before starting to scan items on shelves again.
After testing Tally to perform scans three times a day for six weeks, Schnucks discovered that its stores had better insights on how their inventory was processed and managed. That was hardly surprising to Brad Bogolea, co-founder of Simbe Robotics, the startup that created the shelf-scanning and auditing robot, Tally. Instead, what enthused him was the positive employee reaction.
“Let’s face it, manually tracking inventory is nobody’s favorite task,” he quipped, “The workers were able to engage in meaningful customer service and tackle other tasks more efficiently.”
Read the full story at Dell Technologies.
