Walmart Withdraws Inventory Management Robots After One Year

Surge in Online Sales Due to COVID-19

[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Jae-hee] Walmart, the largest retailer in the U.S., has withdrawn its inventory monitoring robots just one year after their introduction. Initially, Walmart responded to pressure for minimum wage increases by deploying comprehensive inventory monitoring robots, but as online sales surged due to COVID-19, the company began rehiring people instead of relying on robots.

On the 2nd (local time), The Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart recently ended its partnership with Boston Dynamics Robotics.

Since last year, Walmart had deployed the company's robots in its U.S. stores to check whether items on shelves were sold out. This move was a countermeasure to automation after progressive Democratic politicians, including Senator Bernie Sanders, pressured to raise the hourly minimum wage to $15 (about 18,000 KRW). The robots were tasked with capturing images of shelves and using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze the location, price, and out-of-stock status of each product.

Walmart introduced these robots in about 1,000 of its approximately 4,600 stores across the U.S.

However, the situation changed as online shopping demand surged due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Store employees could immediately check which items were out of stock while picking up products ordered online, enabling more efficient inventory management than robots. Additionally, there were reportedly concerns about how customers would react to the 6-foot (about 1.8m) tall inventory monitoring robots roaming inside the stores.

Walmart stated that it will continue to maintain the floor-cleaning robots introduced alongside the inventory monitoring robots and will also continue investing in its own processes and applications that can assist in tracking inventory.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.