We’re not quite at Ex Machina yet, so humans can still use robots to help improve society without consequences.
The last decade has been rife with upgrades, from seamless checkout to delivery drones, geared toward making companies’ and consumers’ lives easier, and integrating robotics has become more common among retailers, grocery stores, and restaurants—both on the front and back ends.
But before robots reach sentience, what’s the next step in the evolution of automation? Retail Brew spoke to a handful of industry experts to get their thoughts on how the industry will evolve in 2023.
Interviews have been lightly edited for clarity.
Jonathan Morav, head of product strategy, Fabric
Where do you see robotics becoming more common in retail?
In the future, there won’t be a single element of the retail ecosystem that is not impacted by the adoption of automation and robotics at some level. Retailers will have robots surveying shelves and counting or replenishing inventory to e-commerce order fulfillment where robots will be used to pick, pack, or deliver orders out of warehouses or even in the backs of retail stores in dense urban areas. This will ultimately extend downstream toward last-mile deliveries, where robots and autonomous vehicles will be making deliveries to end customers.
What are some of the barriers to adoption for retailers?
Historically, the three barriers to adoption have been cost, complexity, and the ability to integrate robotic solutions into the retailer's existing process and operational framework.
What are some ways robotics can enhance the customer experience?
In e-commerce, fulfillment robotics can enable retailers to more effectively pick and pack customer orders, enabling customers to receive their orders faster with better order accuracy and inventory visibility.
Do you believe robots will affect the labor forces? If so, how?
While there is a general concern of labor displacement brought on by this new wave of automation and robotics, it is more likely that robotics will be used to replace jobs that otherwise would go unfilled.
Lior Elazary, CEO, inVia Robotics
How will robotics affect retail operations in 2023?
Retail is moving more and more toward a service model. If you look at malls, they’re kind of like an Apple Store where they’re not sitting there keeping inventory. You go talk to an expert, have an intelligent conversation with somebody about the product, what you’re looking for—more of that interaction.
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What are some of the barriers to adoption for retailers?
I actually don’t believe it’s cost. I believe it’s actually a software platform that’s missing. We have customers that are dealing with 100,000 SKUs. Imagine trying to control traffic: When you have one street; you can have a traffic cop fine doing it. But if you put one traffic cop in a whole city, and you try to route all these cars going through, it’s just way too overwhelming to people.
Where do robotics and automation need to improve in the short term?
I think fine manipulation for humanoids is very difficult. Handling bulky stuff is not; it’s still difficult, but not impossible and works well. But doing fine manipulation—where we have to dig inside the box and find that particular item—[is still difficult.]
Brad Bogolea, co-founder and CEO, Simbe Technologies
Where do you see robotics becoming more common in retail?
We actually believe that there’s a sort of data gap. Many retailers understand what they sell through the front end and what shipped to the store, but being able to instrument these really large store environments [with] automation, computer vision, and AI provide an incredible opportunity to truly understand what’s happening on store shelves. That’s where many customers are making their purchasing decision.
What are some of the barriers to adoption for retailers?
Stores, for really the first time in their history, have been measured at this frequency and fidelity with this technology. The data that sort of generated from this opportunity, shelf intelligence or shelf instrumentation, really has the opportunity to touch every component of their business. So not only sort of optimizing stocking in-store, but it’s assisting with pricing and promotional checks. It’s helping people know where products are in the environment.
Where does robotics technology still need improvement?
The challenge with sort of racking and stacking cameras in a lot of these environments is that it just becomes incredibly costly. There are challenges around sort of support and maintenance—you have to have cameras facing every shelf. What happens when the store layout changes?