With Tally the robot, scanning shop aisles has new meaning

Washington

AS LONG as consumers love low prices, a trend will continue: the evaporation of the human employee.

On Tuesday, a Silicon Valley startup unveiled Tally, a robot designed to help retailers track shelves far better than a human employee could. Robots such as Tally can't do everything a person can, but they offer a reminder of how machines increasingly excel at roles long held by humans.

The idea behind Tally is to take inventory faster in a given store. Simbe Robotics CEO Brad Bogolea says the robot could scan a CVS, Walgreens or small grocery store in 30 or 40 minutes. Tally can capture data on 15,000 to 20,000 products an hour - far more than a human employee.

All businesses want to be more efficient, which lets them offer more competitive prices. As computer and sensor prices drop, robots are becoming a more appealing option. Last year, home improvement chain Lowe's introduced robots that can guide customers to whatever item they want to buy.

The 38-inch-tall Tally is programmed to navigate a store while stopping to take photos of shelves. These are uploaded to the cloud and compared against an idealised representation of the store to see if products are where they should be and are properly priced. Computer-vision algorithms analyse what is out of stock, which products are facing the wrong direction and what is misplaced. A store manager can then check what Tally reports on a tablet. "Hey, three facings of Coca-Cola are out in Aisle 6, we have a mixed-up books item in Aisle 7, we have an incorrect price in Aisle 10," says Mr Bogolea, offering what it might share.

Before Tally is ready to work, a retail employee must first guide it through the store to help it build a map of where it can go. Or a store could send its floor plan to Simbe Robotics, which will program a robot with a map of the space. Tally also includes a range of sensors so that it won't crash into shelves or customers. It can see items on shelves up to eight feet high.

So far, Tally has been rolled out only in limited situations. Simbe Robotics says it can't discuss current in-store trials due to confidentiality agreements but that it is ready for additional rollouts with other retailers.

Stores that stock goods on shelves with easily viewed barcodes and prices are the best fit for Tally. So clothing retailers aren't a great fit. Simbe Robotics says that Tally can work in the frozen goods section of a grocery if there isn't heavy condensation on the freezer doors or a strong glare from overhead lights.

Tally is being sold as a service, and Simbe Robotics wouldn't reveal pricing details. Bogolea said the cost of manufacturing Tally is in the range of making an enterprise laptop.

Simbe Robotics says that the data it gathers from shelves would be of interest to more than just store managers. It is interested in eventually selling the information - which it compares to a real-time Google Maps street view of an aisle - to brand managers. They could see how products are doing in a given shelf space, or how they are being presented in comparison to competitors. WP