Supermarket Robot Makes Sure Your Favorite Snacks Are in Stock

Imagine a future in which your favorite flavor of Pringles is always in stock. With Tally, we're one step closer to making that a reality.

As recently reported by PSFK, Simbe Robotics describes their self-scanning robot as "the world's first fully autonomous shelf, auditing, and analytics solution." Tally is built to glide through supermarket aisles, scanning the shelves it passes by to check for items that are out of stock, running low, or incorrectly priced. One charge is enough to power the device for 12 hours straight, and it's capable of keeping track of items with 96 percent accuracy. Any data it gathers with its collection of sensors is then sent to the cloud, where it can later be processed and analyzed to improve store performance.

Tally has yet to become a supermarket staple, but according to PC Mag, Simbe conducted a secret test-run at an unnamed American store earlier this year. The machine is meant to roam the aisles during normal store hours, so making sure human customers are comfortable shopping alongside robots will be key to the product's success.

As more consumers choose to order their groceries online, supermarkets are looking for new ways to keep up with the changing times. Since 2012, Kroger has been using QueVision to track how many customers are in a store at a given point via infared sensors. And, just recently, Russian inventor Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich filed a patent for a futuristic drive-thru supermarket concept. But as you can see from the video above, nothing makes you feel like you're living in the future quite like seeing a robot in the snack aisle.

Header/banner images courtesy of Simbe via YouTube.

[h/t PSFK]