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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

grocery robots

Urbx’ Vertical Automated Grocery Fulfillment has High Ambitions

As they come to market, automated grocery fulfillment solutions are taking a number of different shapes. Companies like Takeoff Technologies and Dematic are building them into the backs of existing stores, while Kroger and Ocado are building out big, standalone smart warehouses.

Unlike those other players in the space, Urbx wants its automated fulfillment center to get high — vertically speaking. The Boston-based company is working on robotic fulfillment that scales up to 150 ft. tall. While the Urbx system is tall, it only takes up 1,800 sq. ft., so it can nestle into the limited, tight real estate areas in cities. As Urbx CEO, Lincoln Cavalieri explained to me by phone this week, Urbx is “ideal for urban environments, food deserts, where property prices are high.”

Urbx has a dual go-to market strategy. First, like other automated fulfillment technology companies, Urbx will work with third-parties to integrate its automation into other stores. At the same time, Cavalieri said that the company will eventually build “thousands” of its own Urbx-branded automated markets. But these Urbx markets won’t be anything like a traditional grocery store.

The Urbx market won’t have any aisles to roam or bakery sections to get treats from. Instead, the “store” part will be a series of kiosks. Shoppers can either place their order by mobile phone or at the kiosk. Cavalieri said once an order is placed, Urbx’ robots can pack an order of 50 items in less than two minutes. (A 25-item order takes just a little over one minute.) Robots then deliver the packed items to the kiosk for the customer to take out.

Urbx will also have curbside pickup, delivery via electric bicycles and, at some point down the line, drone delivery.

All of this, however, is still a ways away. The company has only raised a seed round of funding and won’t have its first third-party implementations ready to be installed until the end of this year. Urbx hopes to have its first Urbx market developed by the end of next year.

This is certainly the right time to launch an automated fulfillment solution. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed record amounts of people into grocery e-commerce, which is expected to grow to take up 21.5 percent of total grocery sales by 2025.

As such, many retailers are accelerating their automation endeavors to keep up with e-commerce demand. Alberstons is expanding its use of automated fulfillment centers and testing out robotic pickup kiosks. And Walmart is working with three different companies to deploy automated fulfillment centers to dozens of locations this year.

With plans for its own line of supermarkets, Urbx is the most ambitious automated fulfillment startup we’ve covered so far. Now we just have to see if rollout of tall centers can match the height of its goals.

Pudu Server Robots Find Work in Grocery Aisles

Up to this point, when we’ve covered floor robots in grocery stores, the news has usually been about autonomous shelf scanners and floor cleaners. But as a recently released video from Pudu Robotics shows, we could soon be seeing robots that act as mobile advertising and promotional displays roaming around grocery aisles.

Amy Zhou, a Business Development Manager at Pudu Robotics, posted a video on Linkedin this week showing her company’s robots being put to work in various grocery stores around the world. The work shown in the video isn’t terribly exciting, as its mainly a lone robot carrying racks of food items that are on sale. But the move is another example of the mobile commerce trend that I predicted will have a breakout year in 2021.

Pudu’s move into grocery is reminiscent of Cheetah Mobile’s FANBOT, though FANBOT is a little more complex. Where Pudu’s robot just roams around carrying items that you then must purchase at the stores checkout, the FANBOT actually carries an inventory of different items and carries out the transaction to purchase them on the spot.

The idea is bringing commerce to where you are, rather than having you seek it out.

Pudu’s type of robotic mobile advertising could be appealing to grocery retailers. Having a mobile robot or two would give retailers another vehicle (literally) on which they could charge for placement/advertising. As a bonus, multiple, different promotions could be run in a single day. Heck, you could combine the dynamism of a Cooler Screen LED panel with the Pudu robot and have a big, bright, shiny commercial going up and down the aisles.

These types of promo robots might also find more acceptance within grocery stores themselves. Walmart ended its use of Bossa Nova’s shelf-scanning robots this year reportedly in part over concerns with how customers were reacting to the robots. There’s a difference between seeing a six-foot tall robot scanning a shelf and spotting a tray of chocolate bars headed in your direction.

Additionally, these type of self-wandering promo robots wouldn’t be taking a current job (like inventory management) away from a human, but rather adding a new one.

Plus — and this could be the biggest reason we’ll see more of Pudu’s robots in stores — at least one model is has cat-like features and makes a cute face when you pet it.

Ahold Delhaize Orders Up Nearly 500 Floor Roaming Robots

The days of hearing “Clean up on aisle 7” on the grocery store intercom are numbered. Ahold Delhaize is bringing nearly 500 robots to roam the aisles of GIANT/MARTIN’s and Stop & Shop stores to identify messes.

Dubbed “Marty,” the Badger Technologies robot has been in tests at GIANT locations where, according to the press release, the robots were “…easily recognized by customers in stores by their friendly appearance where they were tested and used to identify hazards, such as liquid, powder and bulk food item spills and provide reporting that enables corrective action.” So the robot doesn’t clean up any messes at the moment, it just lets us humans know where to go to with the mop.

What’s not mentioned in this press announcement is any kind of shelf-scanning or inventory management that Marty will perform. Badger’s website lists inventory management and data analytics as part of its suite of products, so it has the capabilities. But from the press release and a Badger corporate blog post, this rollout seems to be more about risk mitigation rather than making sure there are enough rolls of Bounty paper towels available at any given time. Perhaps cleanup and risk management is a more pressing issue for Ahold Delhaize, and more shelf-scanning functionality will be added to the robots at a later date.

Ahold Delhaize seems to be a big believer in robots. In addition to these 500 Martys rolling around its floors, the company also enlisted Takeoff to build out robot fulfillment centers in the back of some Ahold Delhaize locations. Albertsons is piloting a similar system with Takeoff as well, and Walmart is building and testing out its own in-store robotic fulfillment center.

But. As much as I love robots, I have to imagine these are a stop gap measure until cameras and computer vision take over. Cashierless checkout systems like Grabango and Trigo Vision use ceiling-mounted cameras to automatically monitor what people purchase. However, they also provide stores with an always-on inventory system. Robots can roam around the store, but if someone picks up a box of cereal after the robot has rolled by, that won’t get identified until the robot comes back around. Cameras and computer vision can keep an eye out and monitor that in real time all the time. Computer vision might not be as good as identifying hazards like spilled water or milk on a white floor now, but cameras and AI continue to get better and will likely take over for robots like Badger at some point.

What does the future of robots look like? How will they interact with AI systems? If you are curious about the answers to these questions, you should definitely come to Articulate, our first-ever food robot and automation conference on April 16 in San Francisco. Tickets are limited, get yours today!