Walmart’s shelf-scanning robots have been on the move. In the four months since the company announced it was deploying them in 50 of its stores, the automated (and vaguely llama-looking) machines have traveled nearly 2,000 miles through the aisles.
Keeping busy: John Crecelius, Walmart’s vice president of innovation, says the robots have been scanning the food and consumables sections of the stores three times a day. They search for out-of-stock items, incorrect prices, and other things that need an associate’s attention. In total, the robots have scanned about 78 million items.
By the numbers: Back-of-the-envelope math suggests about 13,000 scans per robot per day.
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