As if technology hasn’t taken over enough of our lives already, it now appears that the future of retail shopping is heading toward robotic shop assistants:
http://youtu.be/Sp9176vm7Co
The robots have been developed per medium of a partnership between Lowe’s and Fellow Robots, a Silicon Valley tech company. Now I don’t know about in the US, but here in Australia, finding a shop assistant who knows anything about the products they are supposed to be selling is not easy. In fact, in many stores, just finding a shop assistant is near mission impossible. So, although there may be a viable argument that this innovation will only see more jobs lost for humans, perhaps it may benefit consumers in the long run.
What do you think?
WOW, so every political party will create more jobs, doing what, servicing robotic customer service machines, then again, we should have robotic politicians, they wouldn’t waste $billions of our taxes and could be programmed to be honest.
Jim. How do we know you’re a real person, and not just a robot, Mindblower! 🙂
Hi Jim,
If there is a problem with a purchase, refund or otherwise, and the robot cannot help, does it call on a robotic supervisor, and will they be taught voice recognition for Australians, which doesn’t work to well on a ‘not-so-smart’ phone ….. nod, nod, wink, wink!
Cheers,
Jonno.
This looks like a very workable system and useful too.
Now, will it find items that customers took off the shelves to look at and then put back in the wrong place?
They still will need “HUMANS” to stock the shelves. You would need a much more sophisticated ROBOT to do that.
Nice article…..
Bring it on …tired of chasing sales assistants in Bunnings for help ..only to find they did an apprenticeship in some other trade.
I always use self serve when available..mainly because I get no attitude on a bad day and Ii am always thanked for my custom ..which x and y gens rarely do..
It needs an arm with a finger so it can point directly at the product.
I think like all robots this will frustrate me more than ever. We can’t even get the voice recognition to work satisfactory. e.g. “Hello you can ask me anything you want. I have a problem with my television. Answer: I will get you a representative. The human being is always going to be the default.
I would not use a store with robots only.