Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robomart

Here’s The Spoon’s 2019 Food Robotics Market Map

Today we head to San Francisco for The Spoon’s first-ever food-robotics event. ArticulAte kicks off at 9:05 a.m. sharp at the General Assembly venue in SF, and throughout the daylong event talk will be about all things robots, from the technology itself to business and regulatory issues surrounding it.

When you stop and look around the food industry, whether it’s new restaurants embracing automation or companies changing the way we get our groceries, it’s easy to see why the food robotics market is projected to be a $3.1 billion market by 2025.

But there’s no one way to make a robot, and so to give you a sense of who’s who in this space, and to celebrate the start of ArticulAte, The Spoon’s editors put together this market map of the food robotics landscape.

This is the first edition of this map, which we’ll improve and build upon as the market changes and grows. If you have any suggestions for other companies or see ones we missed you think should be in there, let us know by leaving a comment below or emailing us at tips@thespoon.tech.

Click on the map below to enlarge it.

The Food Robotics Market 2019:

Robomart Drives Home a Deal with Stop & Shop for Mobile Commerce

Robomart announced today that its self-driving mobile commerce vehicles will be used by Stop & Shop in the greater Boston area starting this Spring.

Robomarts are literally little mini-marts on wheels that shoppers can summon via the Robomart mobile app. Once the Robomart arrives, customers choose from the selection carried in the vehicle and are charged for what they take. According to today’s press announcement, the Robomart vehicles will carry a selection of Stop & Shop produce, as well as meal kits and other convenience items directly to consumer’s doors.

I spoke with Emad Rahim, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer for Robomart, who said that while details like the exact neighborhoods where Robomart will be available are still being worked out, they will start off with “a few vehicles,” which may expand to even more depending on how the program works out.

Rahim also said that even though these Robomarts have self-driving capabilities, they will be tele-operated by drivers located in Boston. The company is in ongoing discussions with the city of Boston to make sure it complies with local laws. “Robomart is actively working with the City of Boston and Massachusetts Department of Transportation to ensure Robomart follows all guidelines required,” Rahim said in an emailed statement.

The Robomarts in this pilot will also feature Stop & Shop branding on the side, acting, essentially as big, roaming billboards for the grocer.

I wrote last week about that mobile commerce could be a sleeping giant in the grocery world. With point-to-point delivery (whether by robot, self-driving car or drone), there is always down time for the vehicle, which must travel back to a location empty, before picking up its next order. Since mobile commerce vehicles essentially carry a store with more inventory, they can stay active without needing to reload after every stop.

There are a couple more things of note with this announcement. First, the press release calls out meal kits directly. We’ve been following the evolution of meal kits from mail order to retail shelves. Including them in a mobile commerce play makes a lot of sense. A car pulls up to your door and you can grab all your ingredients for dinner that night in one box.

Second, it looks like Stop & Shop is stepping up its automation efforts in a big way this year. Earlier this week, Ahold Delhaize, Stop & Shop’s parent company, announced it would be rolling out 500 aisle-roaming robots to GIANT/MARTIN and Stop & Shop stores. Some Stop & Shop stores will also be getting mini-robot fulfillment centers thanks to a partnership with Takeoff.

Robots are going to be big this year. If you want to see the future of food robots firsthand, be sure to attend Articulate, our food robot and automation conference we’re holding on April 16 in San Francisco.

CES 2019: Robby and Robomart are Bringing Mobile Commerce to the Masses

“We are like Boeing.” This exact sentence was said to me in separate, back-to-back meetings at CES with Robby and Robomart. Both are autonomous vehicle companies, both are at the forefront of the emerging mobile commerce trend, and both want to be like the storied jet maker (more on that in a minute).

We write a lot about the rise of delivery, whether it’s by human, drone, self-driving car or robot. But a straight-up delivery business is different from mobile commerce. Delivery is a one-to-one transaction. You order something, a restaurant or store puts that item in some kind of vehicle that travels to your door, drops it off and then at some point travels back to a central hub empty.

Mobile commerce, on the other hand, puts the store on the road. When an order is placed, the item still arrives, but it comes with a (small) store. This model is appealing for a few reasons. First, there is no down time for the delivery vehicles. They don’t have to travel back to a central hub and refill before making another delivery, so the vehicles are generally always in use.

Additionally, mobile commerce can encourage additional purchases. You may be a student at the University of the Pacific who just ordered a Pepsi by robot, but once it arrives, the container also holds snacks that may you want to impulse buy.

Finally, this store on the go also gives the retailer more data that is closer to the point of use. If you buy a Pepsi at the store, the store has no idea when you will drink it or what you’ll do with it. But if you order a Pepsi to be delivered to you at the library, or buy one from a mobile store outside your home, chances are good that you’ll consume it pretty soon thereafter. It’s not a perfect science, but it provides more data about consumer behavior for retailers and CPG brands.

But let’s get back to Boeing.

The reason both Robby and Robomart likened themselves to Boeing is because they are in the vehicle platform biz. They don’t really care what you want to sell or where you want to sell it, they just want to be the way you get it there. And the two companies are taking very different-sized approaches.

Robby builds small, autonomous rover robots on wheels. It leases the robots and software to brands who want to form a more direct sales channels with their consumers. In the case of Pepsi, the Robby bot has been outfitted with a cold side (using cold packs, not compressors) to keep sodas chilled and a side with no temp control for snacks like chips and snack bars. When an item is ordered, Robby delivers it, and if the consumer takes more stuff out, on-board computer vision keeps track of its inventory and charges that person accordingly.

Robby goes 20 miles on a charge and has a swappable battery, so it doesn’t have to be taken offline to charge.

Robomart, on the other hand, is thinking bigger. Robomart made a splash at CES 2018, and has been busy ever since. The company builds self-driving vehicles that are low-speed and smaller than a car (similar to a Nuro pod). They are refrigerated and can be customized to fit particular retail needs. The company says it has signed a deal with an East Coast grocer in the U.S. for a delivery pilot.

The Robomart holds more than Robby, obviously, and uses RFID tags to keep track of inventory and charge people. Robomart says this is because it will be carrying a lot of produce, and computer vision doesn’t work as well with fruits and vegetables. Robomart has a 55-mile range and travels at less than 25 mph. To appease regulators, even though Robomart is autonomous, it will at first be driven remotely by a teleoperator. Its business model also includes leasing vehicles and software to customers.

AutoX is similar to Robby and Robomart, but is taking a more hybrid approach. AutoX has regular self-driving sedans to make grocery deliveries, but it also keeps additional inventory in the backseat of the car in case the consumer wants to buy more.

Even the bigger players are getting involved in mobile commerce. Panasonic showed off its concept SPACe-Ce Mart mobile store at CES this year, and Toyota formed a joint venture with Softbank for a mobile platform that would include stores on the go.

Mobile commerce is poised to be huge, and while it may not go mainstream this year, with all this investment and activity, it looks like 2019 will be the year mobile commerce starts to get off the ground.

Amazon’s Market of the Future Is Finally Open for Business

After more than a year of waiting, Amazon’s mini-mart of the future, Amazon Go, finally opened today in Seattle.

With the long-awaited launch, Amazon’s finally gets to test its retail store of the future with real consumers (and not just employees), where customers can simply pluck items from shelves and exit the store without ever having interact with a cashier or other store employees.

This initial location resembles a nicely designed convenience store, albeit one stocked with high-end sandwiches and Whole Foods’ 365 brand snacks geared towards an affluent millennial customer base. Shoppers can also get salads, prepared breakfasts, some alcoholic beverages, and the odd pantry staple.

Customers enter the store by downloading the Amazon Go app at entryway turnstiles. Once inside, you simply pick the items you want from the shelves and exit the store. Purchases are automatically billed to your Amazon account. Sensors and cameras monitor the entire process, working with Amazon’s computer vision system to recognize who took what and charge the correct account accordingly. If you’re mistakenly charged for an item you didn’t grab, you can get a refund by simply pressing a button.

And while there are no cashiers—an angle Amazon is pushing hard—there are still some actual employees onsite, including chefs and people to check IDs for beer and wine sales.

The opening has received responses of all kinds on social media. Some praise it as “the future of retail.” Others are warier, many for legitimate reasons. Some are already discussing shoplifting, and it seems one customer actually did shoplift, though inadvertently.

While undoubtedly the biggest name to enter this space of “humanless retail,” Amazon’s not the only one. Both Robomart and AlPoly got a lot of attention at this year’s CES. The latter is essentially the startup version of Amazon Go, and so the idea of the tech giant acquiring them seems a likely possibility.

That, of course, begs the question of where else we’ll see this technology, either at more Amazon Go locations or implemented in other stores. Is it something we will eventually see widespread across Whole Foods locations? Would there ever be a drive-thru version? Let’s hope so.

‘Humanless Retail’ On Display at CES, But Will Humans Buy It?

One trend on display at this year’s CES is what I would describe ‘humanless retail’, where technology is used to sell physical goods to consumers without the help of humans.

Of course, this trend isn’t new. 2017 brought us a bunch of new ideas for taking the human out of the retail transaction by using machine vision/AI, IoT and more. What I saw on the show floor in Vegas is just a continuation of these concepts.

For example, last year we hear a lot about Amazon Go, a store concept where customers walk in and out without ever talking to a cashier. And this week, we saw the startup version of this in AIPoly, a company which offers a machine vision and sensor platform to create what the company calls “autonomous markets”.

Just as with Amazon Go, AIPoly customers register with the “store” and are identified as they walk in (or up to in the case of a kiosk) through facial recognition. The store then registers a purchase as the machine vision recognizes the products they pick off the shelves.

Below is a pic of the demo the company was showing off at CES.

And then there’s the Qvie, a single-product micro-vending machine that is essentially a connected lockbox version of the booze fridge in the Hilton. Qvie is targeted at the Airbnb host as a way to enable additional revenue through in-room sales, a trend that seems almost inevitable as Airbnb becomes a more and more viable alternative to hotel stays.

Finally, there’s Robomart, which can best be described as the love child of the controversial Bodega and an autonomous automobile.  The vision behind Robomart is a retailer such as 7-11 or Target would lease a fleet of Robomarts, stock them, and then bring the store to the consumer’s home. While it’s not exactly the same as Zume Pizza delivery trucks, it does something similar in making the retail location less relevant by bringing the point of presence closer to the consumer.

Robomart CEO Ali Ahmed told me he expects the first Robomarts to be available this year, which strikes me as extremely ambitious since the company is still raising funding to build out its vision. A mobile autonomous car-store combo doesn’t strike me as something you can do cheaply.

These are just three ideas I ran across in a couple hours on the floor at CES, enough to make clear that humanless retail is going to be much in 2018. The question for me is, will humans buy the idea of humanless retail, or is this just another case of Silicon Valley getting ahead of itself as it looks for addressable markets to apply new tech like AI, robotics and IoT?

The answer is yes, humanless retail is going to big. Sure, there will be lots of companies floating in the humanless retail startup deadpool before it’s all said and done (this is the case with pretty much every startup market in case you haven’t noticed), but the reason I think many of these early ideas will become much bigger and common is they’re simply evolutionary steps of what we’ve been seeing for decades and with much more rudimentary technology.

The self-service checkout at the grocery store, vending machines in your office, and the booze fridge in your hotel room are all innovations aimed at selling things to people without the need for another person to take money and put something in a bag. The only difference with these new ideas is the latest technologies to make humanless retail more convenient than ever before.

CES: Toyota and Ford Push Autonomous Delivery Vehicles

If two recent announcements at CES live up to their promise, you could soon have self-driving cars pulling up to your driveway to deliver pizza, groceries and more.

Yesterday, Toyota announced its futuristic “e-Palette” autonomous electric vehicle. Think of it as a white label mobility as a service. The e-Palettes are basically sleek, see-through, self-driving containers that companies could customize to deliver everything from food to fountain pens to flu shots. While this concept may seem fantastical now, the carmaker showed it is very real and announced it was working with the likes of Amazon, Pizza Hut and Uber.

Then today at CES, Ford announced a partnership with delivery service Postmates to test out self-driving deliveries. The two will do a pilot program throughout this year to see how well the technology works. Postmates joins existing Ford partner, Domino’s Pizza, and was a chance for the car company to show how it’s pivoting towards being a “mobility” company and how autonomous vehicles can be used to generate revenue.

When any of these dreams of autonomous delivery will become a reality remains to be seen. There are tons of technological, logistical and legal hurdles to overcome before roaming wood fired pizza or self-driven Slurpee deliveries arrive at your doorstep.

But all of this news points to a delivery-driven (pun intended) future of food retail. Amazon, Walmart, Albertsons and Target are all ramping up same day deliveries, and even smart-lock makers are creating in-home delivery platforms for when you’re away.

Drones can’t deliver big boxes, and smaller robots work better in dense, urban areas. Autonomous cars will have greater reach into the ‘burbs, and can get there fast. Plus if all a person in a self-driving delivery car has to do is run packages to and from the car to the front door (until the robots can do it), that shaves seconds and even minutes off of each delivery. Those small bits of time translate into much bigger efficiencies for a company with Amazon’s scale.

While the technology races headlong into achieving an autonomous delivery future, there are still big hurdles, not the least of which being municipal governments. Just look at San Francisco, which recently put the brakes on sidewalk robots. Creating safe spaces for speedy self-driving delivery cars will be a challenge.

Hopefully it’s a challenge we can all get behind and resolve quickly. Toyota hopes to have e-Palettes scurrying around town in time for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.