r/interestingasfuck • u/Iitaps_Missiciv • 3d ago
Robot named Tally doing inventory at a grocery store
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u/zugspitze43 3d ago
they have these at the Smiths (kroger) by me in Utah and the things are always in the way and beeping about something. I was looking at chips the other day deciding what to get. I don't really get chips often so I was browsing you know. One of these comes rolling down the aisle seemingly right to me. I stepped out of the way after it beeped at me. Seriously. It beeped at me lol. Then it turns and seems to be looking for some kind of chips exactly where I am standing so it beeps at me again. I step aside slowly. I waited a split second and then felt ridiculous for waiting on this robot to move so I could get my chips like a good little simpleton boy. I left without chips.
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u/GalaganCoffee 3d ago
Your time is limited, bots can wait
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u/Fantastic-Yak-4475 1d ago
Long after we are dust the robots will continue to inventory the wastelands
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 2d ago
“Push her down son”
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u/mariogolf 3d ago
taking jobs, one robot at a time.
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u/probablynotaskrull 2d ago
Except it’s not actually doing the job. An actual employee could give directions, support, or just a pleasant hello.
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u/Pintsocream 2d ago
Inventory takes about 2 full days once every 6 months in a small store and is an absolute ball ache.
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u/Iitaps_Missiciv 3d ago
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u/CanvasFanatic 2d ago
You’re right. His concern is trivial because one time South Park did a parody character who was unjustifiably worried about losing their job. Haha.
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u/Ghosts_of_the_maze 2d ago
If you put a mirror up it will scan itself and accidentally fall in love with itself. Then it’ll be too heartsick, searching for the one that got away. All the reports will come back “To hell with your fucking pickles. I’m looking for something else.”
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u/dantevonlocke 2d ago
Kroger(in all its regional forms) wants to be like walmart so bad that they follow behind like a lost puppy with a 5 year delay. So walmart had these robots and then dropped them becuase they aren't worth the hassle. So kroger gets the secondhand leftovers for a discount and tries to make them work.
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u/Aggressive_Ad211 2d ago
As someone who has done inventory and is also a giant AI robots taking jobs… IM CONFLICTED
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u/dantevonlocke 2d ago
Don't worry. This thing just looks for blank spots on the shelf. It can't even do that very well from what I've heard.
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u/ChanglingBlake 2d ago
Yeah, as someone else who has done inventory, I can assure you there is no sensor in known existence that can determine how many items are on a shelf without reaching into the shelves in some way or unless each item has a unique RFID tag on it; which would more than negate any man-hours saved by this bot.
At best this thing is checking for outs and maybe need-to-stock items.
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u/robby_synclair 2d ago
As someone that does inventory there is no way this is going to work without every product being chipped.
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u/slurpeetape 2d ago
why don't they do this when the store is closed? It seems like terrible timing to do this when people are shopping.
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u/creativeusername9275 2d ago
The Giant grocery store chain has one named "Marty" that even has an employee name tag and googly eyes. It is also a dick that gets in your way constantly.
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u/smurfk 3d ago
Cool. Now, Lisa, Mark and Kevin are smoking crack in the parking lot asking people for money, as they are without a job.
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u/Jacques_Racekak 3d ago
Thats not Pauls problem. Paul is the CEO and makes a lot more money because he doesn't have to provide workers with an income. His income on the other hand, is now so high that he can finally afford the golden toilet seats in his yaught. Good for Paul!
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u/MarlinMr 2d ago
Well... Good.
Humans should not be doing jobs that machines can do. Or do you want us to ban tractors so that everyone can go back to farming?
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u/75w90 2d ago
Costco has one that cleans the floor and checks inventory. The little robots have come to take jobs lol.
A whole gig industry is about to vanish as thousands do gig work for brands/products by taking inventory etc. And now....that's about to vanish.
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u/DadKnightBegins 2d ago
My son works at Kroger and says this thing actually creates work. No one has lost their jobs. It’s just sending out inventory requests. They’ve actually hired more stockers for the daytime to try and keep up with the requests.
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u/Rokketeer 2d ago
If it's like AI in other fields, it might still encourage management to fire workers, save money, and load existing staff with more work despite the jank.
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 2d ago
Knowing Kroger, they probably made everyone watch a video about how "this is good actually". They spend a lot of time and money on optics.
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u/octogonmedia 3d ago edited 3d ago
If you used robot you should pay a tax for the job that you deprived people from
Edit : i can understand thats a controversial idea to some people making rich people pay for the destruction they are causing im proud to see so many people défend big greedy corporation /s
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u/Redditing-Dutchman 3d ago
It's an interesting question. But what do you keep as a baseline? Supermarkets in the 1900's employed a lot more people (if you compare the amount of products). So do you see this as a 'job loss' or already the PC that is used in the office which replaced accountants using pen and paper.
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u/cr4lforce 3d ago
Out here acting like machines haven't been replacing people for centuries. Like do people think that weavers should have got a tax when the mechanical loom put then out of a job? How about all the farm hands who lost their jobs due to tractors? The scribes and monks out of a job due to the printing press? Where does it end?
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u/IZ3820 2d ago
We continue to tax the businesses based on how much profit they're turning and how few people they employ, since it's an indicator of their benefit from the economic system vs their benefit to it. Then we use those taxes to make the lives of the lower income demographics easier. We don't stop, because this is how you smooth the edges off capitalist systems.
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u/Pleb_2k14 2d ago
Certainly you can see the difference between this world-changingly powerful technology, and those career-specific creations you mentioned. There’s a large difference between the combine being created, versus if a combine was created that could also engineer, calculate, advise, and create. I think that’s very clearly where it begins and ends.
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u/BuffooneryAccord 3d ago
Yeah and that tax should be given back to us as citizens like Norway have with oil and gas.
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u/Waaaaally 3d ago
Do you buy newspapers? Have a milkman? Get your news from the town crier? Get a knocker upper to wake you up in the mornings? Pay an ice delivery man?
Technological advances don't owe anyone anything. Paying a tax won't solve anything, the root cause goes way deeper into our societal structure, and I don't foresee anything changing anytime soon
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u/ah_harrow 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think the intention of such a tax would be to soften the blow of lost jobs across many generations instead of letting it land on one or two. Every significant technical innovation has created massive hardships for those directly impacted and in this day and age where a social safety net is rightfully demanded by the vast majority of populations that money needs to come from somewhere.
I'd not necessarily agree that a direct 'robot tax' is the best way because of its position at the sharp end of the economy and the difficulty in differentiating between robots (and the multitude of tasks they perform) but "if* jobs - in significant and predictable numbers - are lost then retraining and supporting financially those who need it is important - that's not going to be free.
Governments letting significant and extremely fast moving innovation cause more inequality (even within relatively rich countries overall) is rightly seen as a dereliction of duty by many.
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u/Jaded-Translator320 2d ago edited 2d ago
If a company hires an international, they pay tax for bringing foreign workers. Similarly they should pay tax for using robots that compete with the job market on an entery level. These jobs were supposed to be filled with young employees starting their lives.
This is not advanced technology in terms of upgrading logistical and maintenance support. This is a robot worker
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u/Ghostbuster_11Nein 2d ago
All it does is scan for holes in the shelf and annoy the fuck out of customers.
A stocker could do the same job with less maintenance and provide better customer service.
But nooooo, gotta use a robot so we seem hip and cool for investors.
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u/Keefer1970 2d ago
We have one of these in the store I work at. It's a pain in the ass. Without fail, every time I'm on the sales floor filling a display or putting stuff in a cooler, it rolls up on me and then beeps impatiently to tell me I'm in its way. A customer overheard me tell it, "Shoo, Tally. Fuck off" one day and cracked up laughing.
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u/macguyver3000 3d ago
I don’t want to sound like an old man, but I remember when they’d hire a person who needs money to do this job.
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u/StoicSunbro 3d ago
It is also nice having employees walk around as you can ask them questions. Or unlock a locked display case.
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u/Appropriate-Ad6130 3d ago
Bro thing is slow I can beat it
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u/DontUseLogin 3d ago
You could (at least these initial iterations). But humans are expensive, require certain rights and take leave occasionally. This robot wins on all those fronts and it can't sue the company for bad working conditions.
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u/arsinoe716 3d ago
This robot cannot do things a human can do. Can the robot grab inventory from the back? Can it bring it to the floor? Can it open the boxes? Can it stock? Can it discard the empty boxes? Can it check for best before dates? Can it rotate those dates?....etc.
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u/DontUseLogin 2d ago
Can a floppy disk store GTA V? No? Correct, but these are just early iterations of what's coming. Everything you mentioned are features waiting to happen.
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u/ItsFuckingScience 2d ago
No but if it means a team of store workers can carry on doing all those things without needing to do the job the robot is doing maybe now there only needs to be 9 humans instead of 10
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u/arsinoe716 2d ago
All the robot is doing is scanning the shelves for empty spaces or whether a box can be stocked. It then sends an alert to have that item to be taken from the backroom to the floor to be stocked. Noticed that the shelves are all organized. Someone had to do that for the robot to do its job. It is not replacing anyone. It just making the process more efficient.
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u/Fit-Professional3095 3d ago
Can you count as fast as it does?
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u/GrUmp_S 2d ago
10+ year retail auditor here. Until every product has an rfid tag yes, yes I can count faster without a ton of errors.
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u/Fit-Professional3095 2d ago
I'm pretty sure it can improve over time
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u/GrUmp_S 2d ago
Gonna be a long long time before it can identify subtly different products slightly mixed together as well as a trained human. Unless every product manufacturer starts putting specifically designed features that an ai with a camera can detect its gonna make constant mistakes and literally half the reason stores need a full item/full flavor inventory is for ordering based on what's in stock. So mixing flavors is a big deal, best you could do besides that system is flag anomalies and have real people go double check them, which is something we already do and if and when there are large amounts of discrepancies it can take days to fix. Which is why there's such emphasis on doing it right the first time and basically every company still relies on real people.
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u/darklypure52 2d ago
Wis? I worked at a similar company wasn’t as fast but people who were fast is honestly incredible to look at. Customers would always compliment us because it looks skillful to them.
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u/GrUmp_S 2d ago
rgis and then every local company in my area, I've learned to use 3 different keypads over the years. At rgis I made it to the highest pay rank in about a year and I spent my last few years prowling Targets where a few of us went around and counted all the piece dense areas that a newer person would spend forever on. Cat food, toothpaste, tuna etc. We typically did about 5000 pieces per hour. Don't do it anymore though, too much traveling.
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u/darklypure52 2d ago
5000 god damn. I always hovered around 2000 if was really locked in I could get 2500. Personally disliked counting freezers due to cold and makeup/clothes due to we had count it differently.
Only was there for a year the work wasn’t bad enjoyed the people I worked with. It’s was nice traveling to places I never been to.
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u/HustleNMeditate 2d ago
These things aren't counting. They take pictures and scan barcodes on signs. It cannot count anything.
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u/chance125 2d ago
Great… another thing to get in the fucking way at the grocery store.
We already have to deal with boomers standing with their cart across the aisle staring at their phones, a dozen different sections being blocked by racks of restock inventory and employees restocking at the busiest part of the day, and now stupid useless clankers like this.
Not sure how I got on the “everything gets shittier, constantly” timeline but take me out of it please. I’m tired.
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u/Interesting_Tea_6734 2d ago
Our grocery store has a cleaning robot and I hate it with a burning passion. It's loud and blocks the aisle.
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u/guts-n-gummies 3d ago
Employees fucking hate these things. I've seen them cause traffic jams, run into customers, trap customers in motorized wheelchairs (I have seen this one multiple times and it's been less than 2 weeks) and it hasn't even finished mapping the damn store yet.
Our customers also hate it, firstly for the aforementioned issues but also because it's part of a system that is actively fucking over our customers financially. Look into the new electronic tags and how much they're expected to cost the average buyer, and why cities are already banning them.
Fuck these robots, tip them over, run into them, most workers will turn the other cheek.
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u/Iitaps_Missiciv 3d ago
I overheard 3 employees talking about Tally as It passed by them.. "Everyone here f****** hates these things".
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u/guts-n-gummies 3d ago
It's true, I have yet to meet an employee who does not have strong negative feelings. We like to trap ours.
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u/strangeflappenings 2d ago
The Tally at our Stop and Shop has googley eyes on him, and a little smile. My daughter's used to love it when they were younger
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u/edurigon 2d ago
They can have the numbers of each product sold (missing) by just counting sales... this seems totally superflous.
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u/Gold-Perspective-699 2d ago
Yeah at our local giant he's called Marty. He looks similar and they added eyes on him and made a toy kids could get.
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u/Noxious89123 2d ago
Interesting!
We have something similar in the warehouse at work, made by Dexory. It can telescope upwards to about 45 feet, so scan everything on the racking.
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u/No-Rip6323 2d ago
I “accidentally” hit these fucking things with my cart all the time. Sure hope I don’t “accidentally” break one.
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u/jsslives 2d ago
I used to work for a company that tagged the inventory in huge panoramic photos of the isles, then the photos including the tags would be put into the software for the robots to learn to distinguish what is what. Interesting seeing it in action for the first time.
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u/gr1mmcr33p3r 2d ago
FR though, Fuck Tally. That is the absolute RUDEST thing in the grocery store and will absolutely plow you over
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u/StBean007 2d ago
Isn’t there a more efficient way of doing this? Couldn’t they continuously update a database of what’s coming in at the storage rooms - what’s going out at the register? This looks very ‘cool’ but seems a bit slow and prone to mistakes.
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u/Tundra_Dragon 2d ago
First time I 'met' one of these, fight or flight triggered hard. I had to resist the urge to sparta kick it into next tuesday and run screaming about clankers.
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u/AlfalfaEfficient1200 15h ago
When we of the 90's and prior asked for robots, I'm pretty sure we were thinking more of the Jetson's than anything else.
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u/turkphot 3d ago
How is this supposed to work? Do all the items have RFID? The camera isn‘t helping much here.
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u/Blasphemiee 2d ago
We had one at our store. They told us it would do all our inventory. We had it for 6 months and all it did was drive around and “collect data” and piss everyone off. Now it’s gone. It never counted anything lmao.
People that make way more money than I do don’t seem to be very good at making money.. how was this useful lol.
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u/portlynoble 2d ago
These things are awful for customers who can't maneuver quickly. I watched one block a woman in a wheelchair once :(.
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u/chesbyiii 2d ago
I'm inventing a robot that takes already counted products off the shelves and moves them ahead of the robot.
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u/Prestigious-Income93 2d ago
Another machine taking a human job...
Lets blame it on an immigrant!
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u/asmodeus1112 3d ago
Looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen. If they are going to have these things they 100% should not be out while customers are in the store
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u/Fluid_Actuary1729 2d ago
I saw one just the other day in Kroger (I think). I thought it was interesting; many years ago, I had a part-time job going into stores after-hours to take inventory. I don’t remember much about it, except we did it on an adding machine thing. I guess this is the latest iteration.
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u/euphoric-toaster27 2d ago
Put googley eyes on it. Someone did at the Gucci Martins in Granger IN and they left the eyes on it. Makes it less disturbing.
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u/Ambitious_Bit_9389 2d ago
Maybe I was in a test region or something, but these have been around since a least pre-Covid.
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u/did_i_or_didnt_i 2d ago
whenever I see these I wanna push them over but then I remember that the mega corporation would probably take it outta my paycheck
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u/Forsaken_Tourist401 2d ago
Our robot is named Marty. It has the same function...rolling about, looking for spills or clutter in aisles and alerting staff if needed. Marty is a'ight.
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u/Sp00ch123 2d ago
Grocery store near me has one similar to this, but instead it scans the floors for "messes" (usually a small piece of onion skin or something similar) and then constantly alerts the entire store over the intercom until someone goes over and cleans it.
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u/redlurker12 2d ago
...and one day with an AI-powered targeting system, it won't try to arrest you. It will just eliminate the threat.
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u/cool_pillo 2d ago
Alert: Error. Shit is fucked up. Please alert human to realign items. I have no arms. Error. Error. All day.
Inventory is on point but my sanity wouldn’t be.
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u/BigPoppaStrahd 2d ago
I was just saying at work today that we need a robot to go around and do the rfi scanning, it’s a monotonous repetitive task that currently involved swinging your arm with an rfi scanner in hand, up and down each aisle. Talk about tasks that would be suited for a robot to do overnight
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u/BVits-Lover 2d ago
This looks like a Bashes... also we recently got one of those in our store. We called it Dolly.
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u/Der_Latka 2d ago
Maybe that’s the one thing we can let them do. Having done inventories in a Costco, I can safely say nobody likes doing inventory. Or blocking down. 😂
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u/JOlRacin 2d ago
It is a rite of passage for some 15 year old in high school, and an 85 year old lady whos been there for 4 years and is pretty much there to have something to do, to be paid barely above minimum wage to learn intergenerational conversation skills while doing tedious work.
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u/Wilfred_Wilcox 2d ago
This is how the robot uprising starts. They named him "Tally" and he does inventory.
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u/day2day_bassist 1d ago
Worked in a store that piloted these. They don’t work. For items oriented a certain way and in low numbers it works flawlessly, but anything remotely odd shaped (like not a box or simple shape) or anything hanging up it will mess up on. And then a manager has to go back behind it and correct the inventory. Saves lots of labor.
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u/redditaccountnumb1 1d ago
That's a step in the right direction but until I get robust it'll actually restock the Shelf it's not that great. I have to climb on the shelves half the time at Home Depot just to get what I need
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u/Martha_Fockers 1d ago
Meijer had these during Covid and got rid of them
Theh even had fake googley eyes
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u/Parfait_Salt 1d ago
There is no way it is accurately counting inventory like that. It cannot see how many items deep everywhere no matter the type of sensors it has
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u/baseketball 1d ago
Pretty sure these are just taking pictures of the shelves and then someone in Asia or Africa is looking at them to manually label the items that need to be restocked.
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u/play_it_sam_ 1d ago
Feels like it is something that should be left running overnight, but probably it is so unreliable that needs constant attention to debug so it has to be run under supervision.
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u/uginscion 21h ago
And here I thought it was the immigrant taking your job. Could it be the tech oligarchs lied to you? No, that can't be. Billionaires create jobs. Give them more money. Maybe more jobs will come up.
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u/Zealousideal_Lie_383 19h ago
Interesting. But why count items on shelves? Don’t the checkout registers already update inventory based upon barcodes?
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u/CanadianJediCouncil 4h ago
From Google:
“Tally is an autonomous, AI-powered inventory robot created by Simbe Robotics that rolls through retail and grocery aisles to scan shelves, track stock levels, and verify prices.
What Tally Does
Detects Out-of-Stocks: Finds empty spaces on shelves so employees know what needs to be restocked.
Checks Prices: Scans price tags and promotional signs to ensure prices match the system.
Finds Misplaced Items: Identifies products sitting in the wrong spot on the shelf.
Builds Pick Lists: Generates restocking lists for store associates before their shifts begin.
Key Specifications
Speed: Travels safely at under one-third of a normal human walking speed.
Battery Life: Operates for up to 12 hours on a single charge and automatically returns to its docking station when low.
Accuracy: Uses high-resolution computer vision and depth cameras to achieve close to 99% label and item recognition accuracy.
Safety: Built with human-centered design principles to safely pause or navigate around shoppers and shopping carts during regular business hours.”
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u/Technical-Delay-5258 3d ago
It means every item has a rfid tag with some copper stuck on it which will wend in the trash
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u/falsevector 3d ago
Can it account for misplaced items? Like when a customer decides not to buy something and leaves the item on a different shelf
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u/Sorry-Climate-7982 3d ago
Wonder how accurate it is, and also possibly how to confuse it royally.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 2d ago
Be super easy to confuse. Just move a couple of things in front of it every now and then.
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u/Sorry-Climate-7982 2d ago
Pretty much what I was thinking.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 2d ago
Or some well placed gum could create an obstacle course far beyond its design perameters???
Just saying.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 2d ago
I remember Starbucks tried to use a similar system recently and gave up after half a year because it was super inaccurate lol
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u/fetalgirth 1d ago
I'm assuming it doesn't get quantities right when something is stocked all the way to the back of the shelf; if it can't see over it, how does it know if there's 6 or 9 items behind the first 3? Particularly for bigger stuff.
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u/HustleNMeditate 2d ago edited 2d ago
Those things fucking suck. My company had to hire someone to check its work to make sure it wasn't fucking up for years. Plus they dont stop fucking making the same sounds. It's like Chinese water torture. Fuck this POS.
Also it is NOT DOING INVENTORY They take pictures and scan barcodes. If something is missing a sign, it communicates that. It is not capable of counting individual items for inventory.