Tesco is trialling an aisle-roaming robot that uses AI and computer vision to independently traverse store aisles and scan the placement, price and availability of stock on shelves.
The supermarket is currently testing Simbe Robotics’ Tally robot at a single store, but plans to extend it to a small number of other stores.
Tesco said the robots help spot gaps on shelves, so staff can better boost availability.
According to the robot’s maker, Tally typical detects 10 times more out-of-stocks compared with manual audits.
A photo of the Tally robot was posted on Reddit by user jsm97, who commented that “nobody went within 5ft of it and kept giving it side-eye”.
The trial follows a similar one launched last year by Morrisons. Morrisons put Tallys to work in its Wetherby, Redcar and Stockton stores to “check that the products on the shelves are being displayed correctly and are legally compliant”, it told The Grocer.
Morrisons was the first UK retailer to test the Simbe robots when it rolled them out in April last year. The supermarket ultimately went for an alternate approach, installing more than 200,000 tiny, shelf-edge, AI-powered availability cameras, in partnership with Focal Systems.
Simbe introduced Tally a decade ago, and the robots are now found in 10 countries, working for retailers including Carrefour, BJ’s, Albertsons, ShopRite and Kroger.
In those 10 years, Tallys have logged 4.7 million autonomous working hours, captured 44.8 billion shelf photos and travelled 1.8 million kilometres, the equivalent of circling the globe 45 times.
The robots have detected 600 million shelf gaps, scanned 18 billion price tags and identified more than 80 million promotion errors.
In January, Simbe announced the launch of the latest version of Tally – Tally 4.0 – which boasts “major advancements in runtime, vision, sensing, and edge AI” enabling retailers to “turn every shelf into a real-time source of ground truth”.
The robots can handle up to 12 hours of runtime (before self-docking to a charging port when needed), ultra-high-resolution cameras, an expanded field of vision, and a full-stack NVIDIA AI infrastructure platform.
“Tally 4.0 captures more of the store, more often, and delivers insights into what’s in stock, how it’s priced, and where it’s placed faster than ever before,” said Jeff Gee, Simbe co-founder and chief design officer.
“While the robot is faster, sharper, and more capable, its design has stood the test of time. Tally 4.0 stays true to the principle that has guided us since day one: technology should serve people,” Gee added.
Tally is not the only robot to be found in Tesco aisles. Last month, the supermarket rolled out autonomous cleaning robots to 600 Tesco Express stores. Project partner ICE (Industrial Cleaning Equipment) claimed it to be “the very first rollout of this scale in the UK convenience sector”.
“Together, we are showing how data-driven automation can work hand in hand with retail teams to improve cleaning standards,” said Mark Bresnihan, CEO at ICE.
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