Giant ‘Hires’ Robotic Assistance
At 172 locations, “Marty” will roam the store, reporting debris, spills or other hazards to its human counterparts.
Jan 17, 2019
CARLISLE, Penn. – Giant Food Stores thinks “Marty” is quite the employee, so much that the company is putting the autonomous robot in 172 locations, the Washington Post reports. The slow-moving gray robot monitors the store “for your safety,” reads a message posted on its cylinder trunk. “Marty is an autonomous robot that uses image capturing technology to report spills, debris and other potential hazards to store employees to improve your shopping experience.”
Giant deployed the Martys to more stores after a small successful pilot program last fall. Stores in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia will receive their own Marty robot. Ahold Delhaize USA, Giant’s parent company, has plans to add around 500 robots to Martin’s, Giant and Stop & Shop locations over the coming months. At Giant, the robots will be in place within six months.
“Bringing robotics and A.I. from a research lab to the sales floor has been a very exciting journey, and we were thrilled by the customer response in our pilot stores,” said Nicholas Bertram, president of Giant Food Stores. “Our associates have worked hard to bring this innovation to life with amazing partners.”
When a Marty finds a spill or hazard, the robot verbally communicates to human workers and customers about the potential danger. The robot also scans shelves for missing items and preforms price checks between the shelf ticket and product bar code, said Patrick Maturo, manager of store optimization at Ahold USA.
Maturo said many times, customers “just walk right by” Marty. “Then there’s a large majority of people that are very excited to see a robot in the store,” he said. “They tend to take pictures of it, video of it and selfies with the robot.”
Giant joins Walmart in adding autonomous robots to its stores. By the end of this month, Walmart will have 360 robots scrubbing floors.
