AI monitors the Walmart store in real time

LEVITTOWN, N.Y. – Who's taking care of the store? In the not-too-distant future, there could be cameras and sensors capable of indicating almost instantaneously when bruised bananas must be exchanged for fresh bananas and more cash registers must be opened before lines do not become too long.

Walmart, which faces fierce competition from Amazon and other online retailers, is currently experimenting with digitizing its physical stores in order to more effectively manage them, control costs, and make money. shopping experience more enjoyable. On Thursday, the retail giant officially launched its Intelligent Retail Lab at a 50,000-square-foot grocery store located in the neighborhood on Long Island's neighborhood market.

Thousands of ceiling-mounted cameras, combined with other technologies, such as sensors on the shelves, allow the store to be monitored in real time, allowing employees to quickly replenish products or solve problems. other problems.

The technology, first presented to the Associated Press, will also identify spills, determine when shelves need to be replenished, and when the baskets are nearly empty. Cameras, for example, can determine the color of ripe banana and workers will be alerted by their phone if they need to be replaced.

The Walmart store is increasingly interested in artificial intelligence in its physical store while Amazon has increased its grocery stakes by buying the Whole Foods Market nearly two years ago.

This puts more pressure on Walmart and other traditional retailers such as Kroger and Albertsons to inject money into their store technology. At the same time, they try to keep food prices low and manage their expenses. Amazon has deployed Amazon Go stores without a cashier, with ray sensors to track 1,000 products in stock.

Walmart's online sales in the United States still represent only a fraction of Amazon's global online merchandise empire, which reached $ 122.98 billion last year. But Walmart says more than 140 million US consumers visit a store in person or online per week, creating a treasure trove of data. In its most recently completed fiscal year, Walmart generated total sales of more than $ 500 billion.

Walmart hopes to start adapting some of the new technologies to other stores over the next six months, with a focus on reducing costs and therefore prices. As the buying experience improves, the retailer expects an increase in sales.

"We really like to see this store as an artificial intelligence plant, a place where we build these products, these experiences, where we test and learn," said Mike Hanrahan, CEO of Walmart's Intelligent Retail Lab and co-founder of Jet. .com, bought by Walmart three years ago.

Hanrahan says the cameras are programmed to focus primarily on products and shelves right now. Shelf-integrated sensors will provide additional information to the store as they know what's on the back of shelves that cameras can not see.

Cameras do not recognize faces, determine the ethnicity of a person who picks up a product or follows the movement of buyers, he says.

Other companies have recently started experimenting with store shelf cameras that try to guess the age, gender and mood of shoppers.

There are signs everywhere in the neighborhood market to educate shoppers about how it is used as a laboratory. Nevertheless, the cameras could raise confidentiality issues.

"Machine learning is fundamentally found and modeled," says Steven M. Bellovin, professor of computer science at Columbia University and privacy expert, who has not seen the new Walmart AI yet. Lab. But he adds that companies face difficulties when they begin to adapt their behavior to a specific customer.

Hanrahan says that Walmart made sure to protect the privacy of the buyers and pointed out that there was no camera at the pharmacy, in the break rooms or in the employee break rooms.

The lab is Walmart's second in a physical store. Last year, Walmart's Sam's Club opened a 32,000 square foot laboratory store, a quarter the size of a typical Sam's Club. The lab is testing new features around the Scan & Go app, which allow customers to scan items as they shop and then buy from their phone, ignoring the command line.

The Retail Lab is the third project in Walmart's new incubation business, created after the acquisition of Jet.com, to enable the discounter to shape the future of the retail business.

It follows the launch of Jetblack, an SMS shopping service for the affluent New Yorkers. The second Walmart incubation project was Spatial &, a virtual reality technology company. As part of the launch, tractor trailers will be installed on some of Walmart's parking lots so guests can experience DreamWorks Animation's "How to Train Your Dragon" through virtual reality.

Hanrahan said the company was using the labs in the stores to better understand the real effects of the technology on customers and workers. He also wants to educate buyers. Walmart is made a duty not to hide technology and small educational kiosks are installed throughout the neighborhood market. Customers can look through a glass data center at the back of the store. It houses nine cooling towers, 100 servers and other IT equipment that processes all the data.

Despite the visible signs and cameras, many buyers, including Marcy Seinberg of Wantagh, NY, did not seem to notice or worry.

"It does not bother me," said Seinberg. "If technology allows me to save money, it would interest me."

A Walmart associate stores items on a Walmart neighborhood market shelf on Wednesday in Levittown, NY. The cameras hanging above are an essential feature of a laboratory living in this 50,000-square-foot store. Walmart plans to use these cameras, combined with other technologies such as sensors on the shelves, to get the best real-time picture of what's happening in the store, so its employees can react quickly to replenish products or solve other problems.

A customer drops her basket in front of an information booth at a Walmart Neighborhood Market on Wednesday in Levittown, New York. Booths and signs throughout the store inform customers that they buy in an artificial intelligence plant.