Today, advances in artificial intelligence and automation technologies point to a future in which robots will play an increasingly important role for retailers.
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Far from the futuristic image conjured up by science fiction in the 20th century, robotics technology now concerns a growing number of business sectors and is increasingly present in companies all over the world. Its progress in industry has been meteoric. According to the annual World Robotics 2023 report from the I.F.R. (International Federation of Robotics), the number of robots used in factories and production sites currently exceeds 4 million, with 553,052 new units installed in 2022. That is three times more than ten years ago.
This also applies to the retail sector. In many retail chains, automation is gaining traction as a response to the exponential growth of e-commerce, which has been rising sharply since the pandemic. According to the Retail Automation Market Outlook: 2026, carried out in 2023 by consulting firm Allied Market Research, the retail automation market is due to reach $21 billion worldwide by 2026, with an annual growth rate of 11%. What’s more, according to the white paper Retail Intelligent, written by Verizon experts in 2023, 60% of retailers’ activities can be partially or fully automated, with a resulting 10% increase in sales. It’s a very tangible gain, and one that is currently encouraging many retailers to take this step.
Indeed, the cost of acquiring a robot capable of performing complex tasks continues to fall year on year, retailers are beginning to turn to this promising technology on a massive scale. What can it do for them? It is set to become an essential part of future retail?
Far gone are the days when, in the early 60s, the first robotic arms made their appearance in the American automotive industry in order to more easily move an object from one place to another along an assembly line. Becoming more and more sophisticated and dexterous, boosted by artificial intelligence algorithms and capable of interacting with their environment, robots are now able to operate at every stage of a business’s value chain. In retail, they are revolutionising logistics and stock management. In warehouses, pallet robots can pack products, put them in boxes after counting and sorting, prepare pallets and load them autonomously onto lorries, speeding up the entire process to reduce delivery times, improve customer satisfaction and save companies precious time. In the US in 2022, Amazon tested the Cardinal robotic arm which, thanks to visual detection technology powered by artificial intelligence, can pick up a package from a pile, read its label and place it in the appropriate cart in a fraction of a second, without ever making the slightest mistake. On a different note, the Multipal robot, developed by start-up Promalyon, can palletise up to six storage aisles simultaneously at a particularly fast pace.
As well as speeding up product handling and dispatch, robotisation also ensures that orders are systematically processed on time, accurately and reliably, even if their volume suddenly increases drastically. Thomas Genestar, Managing Director for Western Europe of start-up Exotec, which specialises in robotic solutions for the retail sector, explains: « Scalable robotic technology enables automation systems to be scaled according to the activity at that time. It’s a matter of adding robots to the overall system in order to respond to the traffic generated by demand.”
Going even further, « Cobots », collaborative robots designed to work alongside human operators, can anticipate a problem and interact with their environment using sophisticated analysis and visual surveillance systems.
They can specifically detect an anomaly in product storage and correct it on their own initiative. Thanks to Machine Learning, they can learn to perform the tasks given to them more effectively, constantly expanding their abilities. Benefiting from a particularly high degree of autonomy thanks to the latest safety, visualisation and navigation technologies, the Proteus robot, which equips Amazon’s warehouses in North America, can move freely to transport carts full of goods while avoiding employees in its path, considerably increasing its operational range.
At the other end of the chain, robotic technology is also making it possible to automate product delivery to consumers, providing a better response to the challenges of that final mile. In 2020, French automotive supplier Valeo presented Valeo eDeliver4U, an « electric and autonomous delivery droid » designed for the catering sector in partnership with Meituan Dianping, China’s leading e-commerce platform for services, which is capable of delivering up to 17 meals per trip without emitting any CO2. In the US, the Estonian start-up Starship Technologies, which has its headquarters in San Francisco, raised a total of 100 million dollars in 2022 to further the development of its robotic couriers Chip, Gizmo and Sunshine, which have already carried out more than five million deliveries since their creation in 2014.
This revolution also concerns points of sale. While store employees currently spend between 10% and 30% of their time at work on tasks with low added value, robotics can relieve them of repetitive, time-consuming and laborious work.
By way of example, the British supermarket chain Tesco has deployed robots invented by the start-up Rfspot, which are equipped with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips and NFC (Near Field Communication) technology to efficiently scan the shelves and automatically identify the products in stock in its stores, enabling them to carry out a complete inventory in one hour, whereas this operation usually takes seven, while considerably reducing the number of errors. In addition, thanks to high-quality sensors, these robots can identify out-of-date or defective products and separate them from the others. For its part, Carrefour has opted for the Tally robot by Californian start-up Simbe Robotics, which boasts similar capabilities and monitors stock in its stores in the United Arab Emirates.
Another example is the Stockbot robot, which was invented by the Spanish start-up Pal Robotics, and has been in Decathlon stores for several years now. It is able to automatically scan shelves, count the items on them and detect those that are missing by scanning RFID tags ten times faster than a human operator could. This level of efficiency reduces the gap between central purchasing and the availability of products in store, ensuring that customers always have enough items to choose from, with nearly 100% reliability. This considerably saves time for employees. For retailers, robotisation is not just a guarantee of improved operational efficiency. It also adds value that improves the quality of human work and improves staff well-being. Stéphane Chabet, Solution Architect at start-up Avanade, one of France’s leading integrators of Microsoft technologies, explains: « Today, robots and artificial intelligence applications are powerful decision aids that facilitate and optimise salespeople’s work. This means that retail, like other sectors, will have to create new professions and new services. »
In the future, with the constant progress made in artificial intelligence, improvement in automation technology, the increased digitalisation of supply chains, warehouses and points of sale, robots will play a more important role in retail. Without replacing human operators, they will help retailers to better manage their stocks, prevent supply shortages and reduce delivery times. Nevertheless, the role they occupy will depend significantly on their acceptance, as in the future they will bring about an extensive transformation of practices that will require a new way of working and a new way of organising skills.
