Walmart ups commitment to store robots

Walmart is expanding its use of automated shelf-scanning inventory robot technology. 

The retail giant plans to bring the bots, from Bossa Nova Robotics, to another 650 stores by this summer. The robots are currently deployed in about 350 Walmart stores. The 6-ft.-tall robot, which moves autonomously around the store, use cameras to scan shelves and detect out-of-stock items and check for pricing accuracy.

The 650 additional robots will be serviced by Bossa Nova partner NCR Corp., according to The Robot Report. 

The news comes on the heels of Walmart’s announcement last week that it is piloting a new technology called Alphabot that is designed to enable quicker, more efficient picking of online grocery orders at the store level. The system uses autonomous carts to retrieve ambient, refrigerated and frozen items ordered for online grocery. After it retrieves the products Alphabot delivers them to an in-store workstation, where a Walmart associate checks, bags and delivers the final order.