Say goodbye to the stock boy.
A robotics company is installing restocking robots in 300 grocery stores in Japan – and the plan is to bring the robots to the US, according to Telexistence, the Tokyo-based company that makes the machines.
Amidst a punishing labor shortage in Japan, these robots, called TX SCARA, will be used to restock bottles and cans in refrigerated shelves and can handle a pace of about 1,000 items a day — the equivalent of one to three hours every day of human work.
One of Japan’s largest grocery chains, FamilyMart with some 16,000 stores, inked a deal with Telexistence to test out the technology, the companies announced on Tuesday.
“The decline in Japan’s labor population is one of the key management issues for FamilyMart,” the company’s general manager of store operations, Tomohiro Kano, said in a statement.
The robots are trained to handle repetitive motions, but “in rare instances” when they miscalculate or an item falls, Telexistence employees can control the robot using virtual reality glasses, the company said.
The use of robots has become increasingly more common globally over the past two years as workers leave certain low-paying jobs, including in the retail, restaurant and hotel industries, as The Post reported.
“The shortage of human labor is rapidly becoming apparent in the retail and logistic industries,” Telexistence chief executive Jin Tomioka said in a statement, adding that the company plans to introduce its “automated labor solutions” to the US.
TX SCARA was developed using technology from two American software companies, Nvidia and Microsoft’s subsidiary in Japan.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
