Walmart yesterday announced plans to pull the plug on some of its robot associates in favor of real people.
The retailer is ending its five-year relationship with technology company Bossa Nova robotics. Bossa Nova produced robots for Walmart that would scan product shelves for inventory and alert managers when items were in need of reorder.
The chain had 500 robots scattered around its more than 47-hundred stores.
Walmart will return to using people to complete the inventory tasks.
So why the switch?
Maybe a couple of reasons. With so many online orders these days, Walmart already had associates going throughout the store filling orders. Why have robots doing inventory checks when the humans are going up and down the same aisles?
And there was also concern about customer reaction to robots.
No one is really mentioning it at this point, but could it be that humans were more cost-effective too?
(Photo: Getty Images)