If you’ve ever been in a Walmart – or any other big box retailer for that matter – you know that many sections of the store could benefit from an extra set of eyes. With the sheer volume of traffic and transactions occurring on a daily basis, things like inventory issues, spills, and abandoned carts can leave the once-friendly aisles littered with… well, litter.
The Associated Press has reported that Walmart is testing new technology that applies artificial intelligence to tackle in-store monitoring in order to address these types of issues.
Its test bed is the recently launched “Intelligent Retail Lab,” housed within a 50,000 square foot store on Long Island, where thousands of cameras and sensors will monitor the store in real time.
According to the AP, the tech can identify spills or assess whether a shelf needs restocking – even if carts are running low. It even works to the point where overripe fruit could be determined based on its color and workers could receive an alert on their phones to replace it.
Kiosks and signs alert customers at the Long Island store that it is being monitored via artificial intelligence, and Walmart has stressed that its cameras don’t register faces, or track the movement of shoppers – nor do they place cameras in the pharmacy, restrooms, or break rooms.
According to the report, the lab is Walmart’s second in a physical store. The first appeared in a Dallas Sam’s Club Last year, which features technologies like AI, robotics, machine learning, computer vision, and augmented reality. It is also “testing new features surrounding the Scan & Go App, which lets customers scan items as they shop and then buy from their phones, skipping the checkout line.”
