Walmart starts using cleaning robots

Sensing non-sick danger from Amazon, the world's largest retailer is introducing new technologies one after another . By the end of January, Walmart is going to install 360 autonomous robot cleaning machines in supermarkets across the country - in addition to the one hundred units that are already being tested by the company. Brain Corp, the company that developed Brain OS, the platform with artificial intelligence that drives the machines, will help with this retailer. It will allow cleaning robots not to collide with shelves and visitors, plus - to increase the efficiency of their work with each passing day.

So far, to put it mildly, Walmart does not expect any financial benefits from new cars. An ordinary apparatus in which a person sits is almost cheaper by an order of magnitude, not counting the cost of development. In addition, for the time being, for each “autonomous” robot, there are two harsh guards in yellow vests who watch his behavior and dare any visitors who might want to ride on it.

The company expects that this is a temporary measure. Hope that gradually customers will get used to the presence of such machines in supermarkets, and they will no longer be of interest. Plus, on top of each robot is (visible) yellow siren. In the normal state, it quietly “beeps”, warning customers that the robot is going, and they need to part. But if the car tries to do something illegal, the siren can roar. Then the guards from around the supermarket come running to see what happened.

Floor cleaning is not the only task for Brain bots. Front, back and sides of them are sensors that collect information. It is then transferred to the Walmart cloud platform ( running on Micrososoft Azure). Machine learning, deep learning and computer vision help the system to figure out which way to go through the store will be the most effective. The duration of the route, the time of cleaning, the probability of encountering visitors at certain times of the day, and the energy intensity of the path are taken into account. Each subsequent lap machine will do a little more efficiently, gradually beginning to justify the investment.

Boot sensors will also monitor which shelves are empty, and signal to the server that they need to be filled. The technology has already been developed (albeit for other robots ), it remains to "insert" it into Brain OS. The same system reveals the wrong price tags for goods - if suddenly they did not have time or forgot to change them. And other machines with the code name Alphabot quickly select and deliver the necessary goods from the warehouse.

Battle for mopping

Who better to cope with cleaning the floor, a robot or a man? Brain Corp says the answer is obvious. Machines are much more accurate and efficient, they do not skip areas and consistently give the same result. Plus, gradually they will learn to go through the most efficient way, and even work in certain time intervals, without disturbing visitors.

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As for what will happen to hundreds of thousands of American cleaners, Yevgeny Izikevich, the founder of Brain Corp and an expert in computational neurobiology, hopes that they "will move on to other, more complex tasks." The speed of the car for washing floors is only 3-4 km / h, and one walk around the store takes an average of five to six hours, so the driver’s talents are not as important as decency, attentiveness and efficiency. “And cleaners can do something more useful — for example, filling shelves or removing spoiled vegetables or fruits from trays.”

But, of course, it is most likely that such people just gradually need to start looking for another job. If the Walmart experiment is successful, each car will replace at least three to four people. And all in all, according to McKinsey, by 2030, 400-800 million people will change their place of work due to robots.

All this, of course, worries little Walmart, which this year reached a record turnover (more than $ 500 billion). Few people believed that the company could adapt so successfully to the new market conditions. This year, Walmart even became the 3rd online store in the US, beating Apple.com and Home Depot. Now he has 4% of the market (with Amazon - 48%, with eBay - 7.2%). Opening from the main competitors is still great, but the growth rate is impressive.

We even noticed that at Walmart through us from Russia over the past year they began to buy more often. Of course, Amazon, 6PM and New Balance are still far away, but the old man clearly does not give up without a fight, and the company’s plans for the future are clearly very large.