Shoppers Beware: The Robots Are Invading the Mall

Image via Carnegie Mellon Universtiy

Robots are awesome. There’s no way around it. Like mechanized messengers from the future, these machines stand to make everyday life easier, factories more efficient and the world safer. In the past, though, the intersection of tech geeks’ fantasies for how robots could infiltrate society and the reality of the actual technology necessary to make that happen hasn’t quite matched up. But that’s the funny thing about the future. If you wait around long enough, it tends to just show up.

This summer, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are showing off the latest innovation in robotic technology: a lightweight, low-cost bot built to work in retail stores. Its name is AndyVision, and although it sort of looks like a hoodied bandit, the machine aims to reinvent the shopping experience.

AndyVision’s main job is inventory management. With the help of a video camera and an onboard computer that combines image-processing with machine learning algorithms, it can patrol the aisles counting stock and scanning for misplaced items. Kinect sensors keep it from running into things in the store, and wireless technology keeps a line of communication with the store’s human staff. The data from the inventory scans are all sent to a large touchscreen, where customers can browse through what’s available in the store.

AndyVision is part of the Intel Science and Technology Center’s “Retail 2020” project to “transform the retail landscape” by the end of the decade, and it’s only the beginning. In the near future, “in-store robots might handle tasks such as folding clothing items, stocking shelves, and helping customers to locate items and load their purchases into their cars, freeing staff to focus on providing more attentive customer service,” says the center. We can picture a sort of robotic concierge service, where customers could use smartphone apps to beckon automatons with complete, to-the-minute knowledge of the store’s inventory and capabilities. Sure, the robots will be stealing jobs away from retail workers, but shopping will be so much more efficient!

While Carnegie Mellon’s latest creation is still in the prototype stages, robots have been infiltrating the retail industry behind-the-scenes for years. In the warehouses of big box online shops like Gap.com and Zappos, they use armies autonomous robots to pull products from shelves and get them ready to ship at alarmingly fast rates. One Zappos manager bragged to Wired that the robotic distribution methods have doubled productivity while erasing safety concerns and order errors. They’re also fast. From the moment you place a new Zappos order, these bots can get the item ready to be put on a truck for shipment in only 12 minutes.

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