Robots coming to a Walmart near you

Shelf-scanning robot. © Walmart.

Walmart is no stranger to technology, having acquired online shopping sites to grow it's e-commerce business, tested straight-to-the-fridge grocery delivery and worked with Google to create a voice shopping assistant. But its latest foray into technology is much more visible to customers, with robots roaming the aisles to scan for out-of-stock items, check prices and fix labels. These towering white columns on wheels will perform repetitive, mindless work, freeing up human staff to perform more challenging tasks. The robots will be deployed to 50 stores in the near future.

⇨ The Verge, “Walmart is using shelf-scanning robots to audit its stores.”

And speaking of Walmart…

First it seemed that Walmart was going with Apple, but then it wasn’t. In a bizarre turn of events, Joe Park, senior director of Associate Digital Experience at Walmart, contradicted his colleague Miles Leacy, technical expert for Apple technologies at Walmart, shortly after a post was taken down from the site of the Jamf Nation User Conference, one of the largest gatherings of Apple system administrators in the world. Leacy said that Walmart would be going from 7,000 Mac computers to 100,000 Macs world-wide in just over a year to cut IT support costs for employees; Park later said that no such program had been rolled out. Happily, both agree on cost savings to customers.

⇨ Cnet, “Walmart not ready to add employee Macs to reduce costs.”