Tesco, the UK grocery giant, is trialling an autonomous robot named Tally to roam supermarket aisles and scan shelves for out-of-stock items, misplaced goods and pricing errors.
Manufactured by Simbe Robotics, a US-based retail technology developer, the five-foot-tall robot utilises artificial intelligence, computer vision and cameras to independently navigate store aisles. The collected data regarding stock availability, positioning and pricing is transmitted directly to store teams, allowing staff to respond quickly to replenish shelves.
According to Tesco, the robots are intended to identify shelf gaps and provide workers with better information to improve overall product availability. Simbe claims that Tally can detect up to 10 times more out-of-stock products than manual audits and has identified more than 607 million instances of unavailable products globally.
The pilot is currently underway in a single Tesco store, with plans to expand to a small number of additional locations.
Tesco is not the first UK supermarket to test this technology, with rival chain Morrisons having initiated a trial of the same robot in three stores last year to verify displayed stock, pricing and compliance.
Source: Retail Gazette / Grocery Gazette
