On April 9, 2019, Dalvin Brown writes on USA Today:
Walmart is planning to use thousands of robots for a wide variety of tasks within its stores following a “well-received” round of tests in 2018.
“Smart assistants have huge potential to make busy stores run more smoothly,” the nation’s largest private employer said in a news release.
Walmart, which employs 1.5 million associates in the U.S. alone, said in the release Tuesday that the plans will give employees “more of an opportunity to do what they’re uniquely qualified for” which is serve customers face-to-face on the sales floor.
Walmart isn’t the only retailer that has robots roaming around.
Home Depot customers can type an item into the store app and call up a map that leads them to where they can find the light fixture or cabinet they need. Shoppers at some stores and malls can also get the information they need from a robot named “Pepper.” And the Mall of America has enlisted a hologram named Ellie the Elf as a virtual greeter.
Also, Amazon has thousands of robots operating in its warehouses throughout the country.
Pump prices:Gas prices are cheapest on this day
Competition: Sears’ Eddie Lampert looks to regain full ownership of Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores
Here’s a list of tasks the Walmart robots will perform
Clean floors
After testing out robot janitors in some stores in 2018, Walmart is expanding its use of autonomous robot mops. The company is employing a fleet of 1,500 autonomous floor cleaners which it calls “Auto-C.”
The company says that the robot cleans floors better than humans.
“After an associate preps the area, this machine can be programmed to travel throughout the open parts of the store, leaving behind a clean, polished floor,” Walmart said.
Price check
This technology scans the products on the shelves to make sure that everything is in its proper place and priced accurately. Walmart is adding 300 new shelf scanners, dubbed “Auto-S”, to its stores.
Unload inventory
Over a thousand robots called “FAST Unloaders” will automatically scan and sort products once they’re unloaded from trucks. Walmart says that this allows associates to move inventory from the back room to the sales floor more quickly.
The robots will work with the shelf scanner to make sure that the sorted items end up in the right department, Walmart says.
Hand off orders
Walmart it adding 900 new Pickup Towers for customers who place orders online. After you place an order online, a sales associate will place the item into these giant vending machines and you’ll get an email saying that it’s ready. When you drop by the store, you chose and you can receive your order from the machine.
Andrew Yang Warns Walmart Robots Will Sideline Workers In ‘Winner-Take-All-Economy’
On October 25, 2019, Kristian Dyer writes on Yahoo! Finance:
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang sees Walmart’s plan to use more robots in its stores as a symptom of a larger problem: a march toward automation with the potential to crush the U.S. labor market.
The retailer, which is the largest U.S. employer with about 1 million hourly workers, is adding automatons to buoy productivity and curb costs, according to a report from CNN. They will handle tasks such as scrubbing floors and scanning shipment boxes. Worker advocates, however, fear their responsibilities are likely to grow as they become more sophisticated.
“We are in the midst of the greatest winner-take-all economy in world history,” Yang, who has repeatedly warned of a “trickle-up” system that benefits the rich at the expense of others, told FOX Business on Friday. “This will only accelerate as artificial intelligence leaves the labs and transforms industries and companies. The best path forward is to make us all shareholders in the progress and innovation of the 21st century through a Freedom Dividend for all American adults.”
That dividend, consisting of a payment of $1,000 a month for every American adult, is a cornerstone of his platform.
Walmart isn’t the first company to take advantage of robotic assistants: Retailers such as grocery store Stop & Shop have been using them over the past year to handle tasks such as cleaning up messes or providing assistance for shoppers.
The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer’s plan will reduce the hours that workers spend on rote tasks and reduce Walmart’s staff over time, according to the CNN report. Rival Target, with 350,000 employees, has no similar plan. Executives there told CNN that “the human touch still really matters.”
Neither Target nor Walmart responded to a request for comment from FOX Business on Friday. Some 82 percent of Americans believe robots will do much of the work currently done by humans by 2050, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center.
The impact may be significant, according to a report in March 2017 from Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University.
“According to our estimates, one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.18 to 0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25 to 0.5 percent,” the report said. “The negative effects we estimate are both interesting and perhaps somewhat surprising, especially because they indicate a very limited set of offsetting employment increases in other industries and occupations.”
Gary Reber Comments:
The ROBOTS are coming to displace you as a worker. And since your ONLY means to earn an income is by being employed, NO job, NO income.
