Please Don't Kick the Inventory Bot

[Narrator] If you're at Walmart and see one of these

don't panic.

It will not scan your face and create a replicant

and then kill you.

It will, however, scan tens of thousands of items a day,

rolling around autonomously and dodging obstacles.

This is a retail robot from a start-up called Bossanova.

It's designed to take over the tedious task

of scanning products manually

with one of those handheld guns.

(electronic buzzing)

We use a collection of sensors to figure out

where the shelf is, and when we orientate to the shelf

we then illuminate the shelf,

this guarantees the quality of the data

that we're capturing and we're simply taking photographs

from the ground to eight feet in height

and we're also capturing corresponding depth

using three dimensional cameras.

[Narrator] In just two minutes the robot can image

80 feet of aisle.

It'll capture a whopping two terabytes of raw data,

scanning a hundred thousand square foot store.

Impressive enough, but this robot

isn't meant to replace workers.

Walmart's humans will use the robots data

to know what to replace on what shelves by hand.

With 200,000 products in a store

every task becomes very difficult, very challenging

and this is why we need this very close relationship

that says the robot's good at one thing,

the store associate is fantastic at another thing

and let's make sure that these two processes

work hand in hand.

[Narrator] Getting along with workers is one thing

but dealing with customers is a whole different beast.

So Bossanova was careful to design the towering robot

to not appear terrifying.

So we refer to this as our R2-D2 style robot

because we're very low, we have lights and sounds

that make this kind of cute,

and it makes this optical stack,

it's currently standing as we stand here at 6 foot 6.

The optical stack is actually blending in to the background

and your eyes are drawn here.

[Narrator] Playing nicely with humans

is a particular challenge in the chaos of retail.

Seriously, next time you're in a crowded store

stop to appreciate how hard it would be for a robot

to navigate such a dynamic environment.

This robot not only has to dodge humans

just standing there browsing,

but humans that want to know what it's up to.

We have people that will want to come up

and ask questions,

What is it doing?

How does it work?

Kids tend to be a little more respectful

where they'll keep their distance,

you know, Can I go close to it?

Is it okay?

[Narrator] Other folks are more indifferent

or, well, aggressively indifferent.

We have witnessed a couple of people walk past

and just kick it.

It's kind of funny, sure,

but there's something interesting going on here

because the robots have truly arrived,

more and more they roll among us.

We're at the very beginning stages of a new era

in which we have to figure out how to adapt

the robots to get along with humans and vice versa.

But remember, no matter how you feel about the machines

know that they can't scan and replicate you,

unless you're a box of cereal,

then you're in trouble.