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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

grocery robot

Albertsons Partners with Tortoise for Remote Controlled Robot Delivery

Grocery giant Albertsons announced today that it has partnered with Tortoise to pilot remote-controlled robot grocery delivery at two Safeway stores in Northern California.

Tortoise is a little different from other players in the robot delivery space. First, the Tortoise bot is bigger than other rover bots. It can carry 120 pounds and is meant to haul a week’s worth of groceries. Second, the Tortoise is not meant for on-demand delivery, but rather scheduled drop offs (like a weekly grocery order). Finally Tortoise is different because it is eschewing autonomous driving for full teleoperation of its robots, meaning there is a human always remotely in control as the robot travels from store to door.

Tortoise Co-Founder and President, Dmitry Shevelenko, told me by phone today that Safeway will be using the second generation Tortoise bot, which has improved functionality and a flatbed carrying platform. Orders will be placed inside Safeway-branded containers that have Bluetooth locks. Eventually, Shevelenko said that these containers will be motorized, which will allow them to slide off the flatbed of the robot and sit outside a person’s home so groceries can be dropped off even when someone isn’t there.

Safeway’s first Tortoise tests will be in the northern California towns Tracy and Windsor. As Shevelenko pointed out, these suburban locations are actually significant because it shows robot delivery is “not just an urban phenomenon.” This type of suburban location is also being targeted by Refraction and its rugged three-wheeled, bike lane-riding robot.

During these Safeway tests, Tortoise robots will be accompanied by humans, which is not uncommon as city and local government figure out how to safely deploy robots on public city sidewalks. For instance, Postmates’ autonomous Serve robot still has a human escort while making deliveries in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The Tortoise partnership is just the latest in a string of automation moves for Albertsons. The company is expanding the use of robotic micro-fulfillment of e-commerce orders in the Bay Area, and more recently, it started testing a robotic kiosk in Chicago for automated curbside pickup.

Tortoise is the latest robot delivery company to officially hit the road making commercial deliveries. In addition to Postmates and Refraction, Starship and Kiwibot are also scurrying around Modesto and San Jose, respectively. For a broader picture of the robot delivery space, check out The Delivery Robot Market Report I wrote for our Spoon Plus member service.

Ocado Buys Kindred Systems and Haddington Dynamics for a Total of $287M

British grocer Ocado announced yesterday that it is bolstering its robotics capabilities with the acquisitions of North American companies Kindred Systems and Haddington Dynamics for a total of $287 million.

Kindred Systems is an AI company that develops piece-picking robots with computer vision and motion control. The technology uses deep reinforcement learning to help robots better handle the variety and types of items found in grocery. Haddington Dynamics builds “highly dextrous” robotic arms that can be 3D-printed and are subsequently low cost.

According to an Ocado presentation on the deal, the company spent $262 million in cash on Kindred and $25 million in cash and stock on Haddington. Both deals are expected to close in 2020.

Putting an obvious two and two together, with these purchases, Ocado is getting a smarter, more advanced system for picking groceries that the company can deploy at its automated smart warehouses.

In a broader sense, these deals come against the backdrop of the global pandemic, which pushed people to record amounts of online grocery shopping this year. While sales have come down from those record highs earlier this year, online grocery is still projected to make up 21.5 percent of total grocery sales by 2025, hitting $250 billion.

All of those orders will need to be fulfilled, and the speed at which orders can be processed and delivered to/picked up by consumers could determine the retail winners and losers in the new grocery landscape.

In a more specific sense, Kroger, which is an investor in Ocado, is using Ocado’s technology to build out automated fulfillment warehouses across the U.S. The first of those warehouses is set to open early next year. The ability to set up smarter robotic systems more quickly could translate into opening up those warehouses sooner.

Ocado isn’t the only robotic grocery fulfillment solution coming online. Takeoff Technologies, which builds micro-fulfillment centers in the backs of existing stores is expanding its relationship with Albertsons. And FreshDirect is using Fabric’s automated fulfillment system in the D.C. area.

With the pandemic still going strong coupled with the colder winter months upon us here in the northern hemisphere, there’s a good chance the online grocery shopping sales will crop back up as people avoid going outside. After eight months of pandemic living, the question will be how much has grocery e-commerce become a new everyday habit. If so, the robots will be ready.

Tennant Debuts New, Smaller Brain OS-based Floor-Scrubbing Bot

Tennant, a company that designs and manufacturers cleaning systems, announced today the debut of its new T380AMR Robotic Floor Scrubber, which is powered by Brain Corp.’s Brain OS. The new robot is smaller than other versions of Tennant’s floor scrubbers, allowing the robot to navigate smaller spaces.

The Brain OS is used by a number of different robot manufacturers for a variety purposes including scrubbing and vacuuming floors. Brain-powered robots can autonomously traverse store aisles cleaning, all while avoiding people and other obstacles.

The COVID crisis is placing a spotlight on store sanitation. According to Brain Robots can provide a more thorough cleaning that is also verfiable (you can check the software to see where the robot has been). Additionally, shifting the dull, repetitive work of floor scrubbing over to a robot frees up humans to do other higher-skilled tasks like customer service.

Floor-scrubbing robots are part of a larger move grocery retail is making towards automation. In addition to floor scrubbers, we’re also seeing robots from Bossa Nova and Simbe Robotics autonomously scan shelves to check inventory, and companies like Takeoff and Fabric build out robot-powered automated fulfillment.

T380AMR Ride-On Robotic Scrubber | Product Overview | Tennant Company

Brain-powered floor scrubbing robots are already being used by Walmart, as well as other retailers like Schnuck Markets, Kroger and Giant Eagle.

The news from Tennant today is interesting because a more diminutive robot is built to work in smaller stores with tighter spaces. While no pricing information was made available, presumably this smaller version — meant for smaller stores — would be more affordable and open up autonomy to more stores.

In other words, be ready to see more robots when you go grocery shopping.

Schnuck Markets Expands Use of Tally, Simbe Robotics’ Shelf-Scanning Robot

Missouri-based regional grocer Schnuck Markets announced today that it is expanding its use of Simbe Robotics‘ shelf-scanning Tally robot. Tally will be rolled out to an additional 46 stores, bringing the total number of Schnuck locations using the robot to 62.

Tally is a tall, autonomous robot that roams store aisles and uses a combination of computer vision and RFID to analyze on-shelf inventory. Simbe says that Tally is 14x better at detecting out-of-stock items than manual auditing, which results in a 20 percent reduction in out-of-stock items.

Schnucks first started using Tally in the summer of 2017 and expanded that pilot in 2018. It takes Tally about three hours to scan the roughly 35,000 products per store, but it helps give store managers a closer-to-real time assessment of store inventory throughout the day.

In-store inventory accuracy is perhaps more important than ever. The early stages of the COVID pandemic and subsequent panic shopping meant staples were out of stock at stores across the country. Even though those dark times passed and stores are back to being fully stocked, grocers are girding for the holidays and potential a virus resurgence over the coming months by stocking up.

When I interviewed him in August, Brad Bogolea, Co-Founder and CEO of Simbe Robotics, said that Tally can not only help with shocks to the system like what happened with the pandemic, but can also help provide more accurate inventory data for the increase in online grocery shopping. As anyone who has shopped for groceries online can attest, a big gap in inventory data means what you order may not actually be in stock when you pick it up at the store or it arrives by delivery.

Schnucks isn’t the only market that’s investing automation. Walmart is adding 1,000 Bossa Nova shelf-scanning robots to its workforce, and Woodman’s Markets is using Badger Technologies robots throughout the midwest.

In addition to Schnucks, Simbe is also working with Giant Eagle supermarkets here in the U.S. After an initial set up fee, Simbe makes its money by charging between $2,000 – $4,000 per month per store, depending on the size and number of stores.

Starship Robots Now Delivering Groceries for Save Mart in Modesto, CA

Save Mart announced today that it it is now using Starship’s sidewalk robots for grocery delivery in Modesto, CA. This is the first grocery partnership for Starship in the U.S.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, Starship said its robots can each carry up to 20 pounds of groceries, or roughly three shopping bags, and can travel up to four miles round trip. Save Mart customers interested in using the service will order groceries directly from the Starship app.

While this is the first U.S. grocery partnership for Starship, the company has been doing robotic grocery delivery in the U.K. for a while now. Here in the U.S., Starship is mostly known for its college campus food delivery, and has lined up a number of partnerships with higher-education institutions including George Mason University, University of Pittsburgh and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

But the COVID-19 pandemic caused many schools to shift from in-person to online learning, reducing the need for campus food delivery. Though Starship robots are still active on campuses like the University of Houston and Bowling Green, the company has been expanding outside of schools. Starship added general restaurant delivery to cities like Tempe, AZ, Frisco, TX and Chevy Chase, VA.

While the pandemic may have dimmed Starship’s college go-to market strategy, COVID has spurred an interest in the type of contactless delivery robots brings. Robots don’t get sick, and they remove a vector of human-to-human transmission of the virus. We’ve seen accelerated activity from other players in the robot delivery space like Refraction in Ann Arbor, MI and Kiwibot in San Jose, CA and Denver, CO.

There are still a couple of details we don’t know about Save Mart’s robot delivery program. We’ve reached out to Starship to find out how many robots the store will have in service as well as any delivery fees associated with robot grocery delivery there. UPDATE: A Starship rep told us there 30 robots being used and delivery fees vary based on distance.

It’s a safe bet, however, that given how the pandemic continues its steady presence in this country, we’ll be seeing more grocery partnerships for Starship take off in the coming months.

Grocer Giant Eagle to Spread Its Robotic Wings

There was a time when all you needed to make your grocery store stand out was a better selection of food. Those quaint days are gone as any food retailer worth its sel de mer now needs robots. Whether they are in the storeroom or out and about in the aisles, all the cool kids are getting robots: Albertsons, Kroger, Stop & Shop, and Walmart, to name a few.

Regional grocery chain Giant Eagle evidently got the robo-memo and will soon have its own automaton sailing up and down its rows of products. TribLive reports that Tally, a shelf-scanning robot, will be working at Giant Eagle checking inventory, identifying items put back in the wrong place and verifying price tags. Data collected by Tally can also provide insightful analytics about purchases, store presentation and inventory to store management. The robot, built by Simbe, has actually already been in use in pilot programs at a number of Giant Eagle locations in the Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Akron.

Same as just about every other grocery chain that adds robots to the roster, Giant Eagle insists that Tally won’t be taking any human jobs. Instead, the robot will assist humans by taking over tedious, time-consuming tasks (like going up and down the aisles, checking inventory).

Giant Eagle’s announcement comes just days after Walmart announced it was greatly expanding its robot program, adding shelf-scanning bots to 300 locations, as well as floor scrubbing robots to more than 1,000 stores. It also follows Ahold Delhaize’s news in January that it was deploying 500 “Marty” robots to scan for spills in its Giant Foods and Stop & Shop stores.

For those who keep track of this sort of thing, each of these robots is made by a different manufacturer. As noted earlier, Giant Eagles’ bot is made by Simbe, Walmart’s shelf-scanner is made by Bossa Nova and Ahold Delhaize ordered robots from Badger Technologies. In addition to keeping tabs on which grocers go robotic, we’ll also need to see which robots they are buying (and from whom) to see if there is a particular automated solution that is working better for retailers.

It should be noted, however, that the days of the shelf-scanning robot could be numbered. There are a number of companies building cashierless checkout systems that use hundreds of tiny cameras mounted to the ceiling which not only keep track of what people buy, but also give the store a continuous, real-time snapshot of shelf inventory. This sort of setup would be faster than waiting for a robot to make its rounds.

The fact that so many grocery stores are adding robots is just one of the reasons we created the ArticulATE food automation summit, happening next week in San Francisco. We’ll actually be talking food retail with Albertsons to see how robots play into its overall playbook. Tickets are just about gone, but you can still grab one today!

This Origami Robot was Built to Bag Groceries

Groceries are a bit of an odd duck when it comes to automation. It’s a bunch of irregular shapes with different weights and oftentimes they are very delicate, so you can’t have just any robot hand trying to pick up and move them around. A grocery packing robot needs a certain… touch.

This was the inspiration for researchers at MIT and Harvard, who have developed an oragami-inspired Magic Ball robot gripper that can gently pick up irregularly shaped objects and place them where they need to go. From the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab blog post:

To give these soft robots a bit of a hand, researchers from MIT and Harvard have developed a new gripper that’s both soft and strong: a cone-shaped origami structure that collapses in on objects, much like a Venus flytrap, to pick up items that are as much as 100 times its weight. This motion lets the gripper grasp a much wider range of objects – such as soup cans, hammers, wine glasses, drones, and even a single broccoli floret.

You can check the origami bot in action here:

Origami Robot Gripper

Funny enough, this breakthrough robot was built to bag groceries. From that same blog post:

“One of my moonshots is to create a robot that can automatically pack groceries for you,” says MIT professor Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and one of the senior authors of a new paper about the project.

There are actually a number of companies working on making robotic manipulation of groceries better. Soft Robotics has its “air actuated soft elastomeric end effectors” for delicate handling, and OpenAI has developed a robotic hand that can learn to do more human-like actions (like nestling groceries in a bag).

Rus’ breakthrough is coming at the right time. Robot-powered fulfillment centers are being built by a number of grocery outlets including Kroger, Albertsons and Ahold Delhaize. Right now, these robot systems are more like crates that shuttle food items around and deposit them with a human who takes the assembled food and places it into the appropriate order.

If this origami robot works as described, humans could be removed from the fulfillment equation altogether. This brings up a whole hornet’s nest of societal issues that we talk about often here, and is part of a much-needed larger discussion about the role of robots in human society. But for the purposes of this blog post, let’s just focus on the technology.

Using an origami picker in conjunction with an automated fulfillment center means your grocer can bag your order faster. Add in a self-driving delivery vehicle and you have an automated workflow that can run all day and night.

I’m sure this new Origami gripper will come up during our chat with Albertsons on-stage at our upcoming ArticulATE food robotics summit in San Francisco on April 16th. Get a grip on your ticket today!