A robot will soon be able to handle the groceries for you.
Wal-Mart announced on Friday that it will soon integrate an automatic shopping cart called 'Alphabots' in a supermarket in Salem, New Hampshire.
Alphabots can select and package shoppers' online orders and complete other common tasks to streamline Wal-Mart's online grocery service.
Mark Ibbotson, Wal-Mart's executive vice president of central business, said in a statement that Alphabot will operate behind the scenes by automatically taking items out of the warehouse and handing them over to employees who will be integrated according to the order, thus making the whole process It has become easier.
'For our receiving partners, this means they spend less time looking for products on the shelves and spending more time ensuring that customers get the absolute best service in terms of fresh produce, meat and more.'
The retail giant installed an expansion of 20,000 square feet, connecting to the store that integrated the 'Alpha Robot'.
There, shoppers can receive their online orders via the fast track.
The 'Alpha Robot' will grab the ordered items, which are stored in 'warehouse' and then shipped to one of Wal-Mart's four different sites.
It can collect dry goods, refrigerated and frozen items.
According to Yahoo Finance's report, the whole process takes place behind the store, and customers can't see what happened.
Currently, Wal-Mart is only testing Alphabots at its Salem store as part of a limited trial with its robotic startup, Alert Innovation.
Wal-Mart said it plans to let Alphabot go online before the end of the year.
Ibbotson said: 'Although this is a small experiment, we have high hopes for it. For this new technology, we have a lot to understand, we are excited about how to use it to optimize future shopping and work.'
In addition to Alphabots, Wal-Mart has also introduced Pickup Towers (an automatic picking robot) to more stores to streamline its online grocery service.
Among the 200 retail stores in Wal-Mart, there are already Pickup Towers, but the company plans to add the robots to 500 stores across the country by the end of the year.
Now, this type of robot not only stores grocery orders, but also stores large items in separate lockers, such as TV.
These two services are just another way Wal-Mart can better compete with Amazon and Whole Foods.
Walmart recently stepped up its offensive against Amazon, launching a shelf scan inventory robot, auto-driving floor cleaning robots and other gadgets to reduce costs and increase employee productivity.
Last year, Walmart revealed that it will launch shelf scanning robots in more than 50 stores in the US to replenish inventory faster and save time for employees when they run out of supplies.
About 2 feet (0.61 meters) of this robot is equipped with a tower with a camera mounted, scanning channels to check inventory, identifying missing and misplaced items, incorrect prices and wrong labels.
These robots pass this data to the employees, who store the data and correct the errors.
For retailers, out of stock is a big problem, because every time a shopper can't find a product on the store shelf, they miss the sales opportunity.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has been testing shelf scanning robots in stores in Arkansas, Pennsylvania and California.
In addition, one of the best opportunities for Walmart Inc to compete with Amazon.com Inc. in e-commerce is to have six giant server groups, each larger than 10 football fields.
These facilities cost Wal-Mart millions of dollars and took nearly five years to build, and now these facilities are beginning to pay off.
In the past three quarters, the retailer's online sales have continued to grow, far exceeding the broader industry growth.
Driving this growth is the thousands of private servers that enable companies to process virtually unlimited customer data internally.