We dont have those here, but my understanding was they were going to have a camera and a scale in the bottom, much like the checkouts.  If you pop in more than it should weigh, the cart freezes up or something ( like when you take it too far from the store, or if its just in a bad mood and decides to lock on you ) 

If enough people don't start being jerks and walking out leaving all their stuff for some 6 foot robot to restock in a mostly empty store - they'll just keep expanding this.

Sat May 16 2026 13:01:52 EDT from Nurb432

This could fall in many rooms..  But it is grocery related..

 

Today at local Kroger ( huge Midwest grocery chain for those that dont know ) was in one of the isles near the entrance of it, turned around and there was a 6' robot standing there behind me in the main walkway..  wtf..  I guess they are being used for 'shelf inventory', and notify if there is low stock or mis-priced items. Ran into it again in another isle later, trying to find something. it froze and stood there waiting.  Plenty of room for me and it, but i guess its programmed to stay away from people. 

And even tho it was 10am on a Saturday not ONE manned checkout lane was open.   AND no one around to help when your self-checkout POS computer freaks out, like mine did.. After 5 minutes i almost walked out. But i dont want to be 'that guy' and leave all my stuff there.         ( similar last night at Lowes,  a hardware store chain, it was PACKED.. a 20 minute wait for me and the dog in line at the only manned checkout they have, in the garden center.   I had some pretty heavy stuff, didn't want to piss off the u-scan since i cant put it on the tray to be weighed for anti-theft. same thing here, almost walked but dont want to be a jerk )

In this case, the robot does not actually restock, he just notifies the staff that restock/rearrange is needed.  People still will the 'heavy lifting', so no one really was replaced here.  

Here, i think it can be helpful, i was just surprised to see it. Inventory is tedious work, and staff cant be in every part of the store at once, tho nor can the robot i, do agree.  I can see this expanding to be just cameras on the shelf, looking across to the other side.   Cameras are cheap, and its the same basic back end tech to 'review' . And they can help identify a mess.. Like when some idiot trashes the area looking for something. "isle 2, section 5, should have neatly stacked boxes, but we detect them all on the floor.. or a huge hole when we show stock on record"  

And yes, i do agree that in theory, the checkouts also can help with stock levels. "we put 20 on the shelf, it says we sold 19, better get out there". But for some reason its always been unreliable, i don't know why. Theft cant be the major cause of that.

Tho sort of OT, it reminds me of a robot we had at Ford  back in the early 90s. It did the heavy lifting in one of the cribs, so in effect stocking and restocking. 4 story area, size of a large house.  You walk up, punch in what bay you wanted. Robot lift would go grab a box, bring it down, and humans would pull out the parts they needed, then robot put it back.  Of course my first thought, oh not good, i wonder how many people lost their job.  Answer in this case was none. But, they were no longer digging out 1 ton crates 30 feet in the air and taking risks..   So really, it was cool. Noisy as hell tho.  lol

Now, the robots i dealt with on the lines at both GM and Ford, that was a different story and i had mixed feelings about it, but it was my job, so i did it.   One GM plant i toured in school in the late 80s, had 4 lines in one area, doing the same exact thing. Everyone "oh, that is neat, and moved on"  i noticed the details, each 'bay' was identical in each line. But if you look close. they alternated between human and robot..  Look enough, every human had a robot in one of the other lines. Look even closer, the bolts for the cage was already on the floor in the human bays. I asked later if what i saw was happening and they were waiting for attrition to replace ( still sort of sad, but better than being fired. ).   And they had delivery bots running the floors, about stepped on a small one.  lol.   they followed painted tracks in the middle of the isles and walk ways.

Sun May 17 2026 19:29:14 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

If enough people don't start being jerks and walking out leaving all their stuff for some 6 foot robot to restock in a mostly empty store - they'll just keep expanding this.

 

 

I mean - so when I came on at Intel - our department's charter was to make Intel a fully 100% eBiz org front to back and side to side by 2003... blah blah blah. 

Every time I'd land a new sever environment - a few weeks later, I'd notice an entire area of cubicles cleared out. To the point where I finally couldn't ignore the coincidence. The more we moved away from paper - the emptier the campus got. 

It wasn't a great feeling - and eventually - once everything got stable enough - I was next. 

( in the food room so its not OT )

Well, i tried to eat a sandwich for lunch. But messed up, got the meat on the wrong side of the bun, cant have it touching the top bun..  ick!  had to toss it.