Grocers’ Guide to Robotics

Robotics and automation are proliferating throughout the food retail industry, from shelf intelligence and automated picking systems to robot floor scrubbers, last-mile delivery and beyond. Not only are robots making associates’ jobs easier, but they’re also upping the ante on operational efficiency and helping to streamline the overall supply chain.“Robotics enables grocers to meet rising operational demands while controlling costs,” explains Faizan Sheikh, co-founder and head of customer success at Kitchener, Ontario-based Avidbots. “Tight margins, labor shortages and ‘winning back retail’ against e-commerce leave little room for inefficiency.” [RELATED: Progressive Grocer's 92nd Annual Report]Indeed, robotic solutions have made it easier for grocers to scale automation and alleviate the burden on associates, notes Brad Bogolea, CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Simbe. “By equipping store teams with always-on inventory data and AI-powered recommendations, robotics are redefining store operations and enabling smarter decision-making at every level,” he explains.Shoppers are increasingly accepting the presence of robots in their grocery stores, with Simbe finding that 96% have a positive or neutral attitude toward in-store robots, while 77% view them positively. Only 4% have negative feelings about their presence in stores. Moreover, the company found that 90% of store managers using its autonomous shelf-scanning robot Tally say that they wouldn’t want to do their job without it.“Retail tech investment has surged 151% over the past year, with the greatest investment in robotics,” Bogolea says. “As a result, retailers are under growing pressure to turn innovation into impact — but only 20% have scaled their in-store technologies.”With that ever-present gap between the need for multimodal solutions and the number of grocers that have yet to adopt them, here’s a closer look at how robotics and automation are currently being used at food retail, and where the technology could be headed within the industry in the next five to 10 years.The AI of It AllAt the heart of today’s robotics and automation solutions is artificial intelligence (AI). According to David Pinn, CEO of San Diego-based Brain Corp, the technology is making robots smarter and allowing them to better understand their environment and interact with people intelligently.“Through advanced computer vision and machine learning, robots can adapt how they behave around different obstacles,” Pinn explains. “For example, a robot can stay far away from shoppers but get very close to stationary objects to maximize cleaning or scanning coverage.” Indeed, AI is the backbone of many robotics initiatives because it helps grocers operate in unstructured environments that have traditionally required a person to be present, including on city sidewalks, says Ahti Heinla, CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Starship Technologies, which makes autonomous delivery robots. Additionally, Bogolea says that AI directly enhances the day-to-day in-store experience by helping with such tasks as generating optimized pick paths for associates fulfilling online orders, or enabling shoppers to navigate the store more efficiently using guided paths based on their shopping lists. “As grocers increasingly turn to data-driven analytics to guide business and inventory decisions, AI will function as the essential layer of intelligence powering automation, personalization and predictive capabilities across the entire shopping journey,” he predicts. In-Store RoboticsRobots working at the store level cover a large range of duties, and according to Pinn, certain robotics applications go a long way toward bringing automation from the digital world into the physical world. As he notes, a report by the U.K.-based IGD (Institute of Grocery Distribution) highlights that physical stores will command 94% of the total grocery market share in 2029. With the National Retail Federation’s estimates of a 4.6 million-worker shortage by 2030, robots have become critical to bridge capacity gaps and bring precision and efficiency directly to the physical store floor.In 2024, BrainOS robots provided cleaning services across 42 billion square feet of retail floor. The company’s robots also track inventory in stores and distribution centers, ensuring the right product or pallet is in the right place at the right time, and at the right price. At Bentonville, Ark.-based Sam’s Club alone, BrainOS robots capture 23.5 million images daily. Avidbots’ Kas, meanwhile, is an autonomous floor scrubber for retail stores that helps associates maintain clean, safe environments. This type of application allows an associate to simply “press go” on the company’s robots to scrub the floors, while the associate is instead able to focus on higher-value areas to clean, like bathrooms, registers and windows, Sheikh says.In other functionality, Simbe’s aisle-roving Tally can deliver high-fidelity and whole-store visibility, capturing precise data on product availability, pricing and shelf conditions across the entire store multiple times per day. “This makes robots the foundation of a multimodal tech stack, with fixed sensors offering complementary, high-frequency monitoring in priority zones,” Bogolea explains. “Together, they balance coverage, fidelity and frequency, while robots require minimal infrastructure and are fast to deploy, delivering scalable impact across formats.”Also being deployed at the store level are robots that can assist with last-mile delivery. Starship’s self-driving delivery robots operate 24/7 on sidewalks globally and in any weather conditions.“We offer a complete turnkey solution, including an analytics dashboard, training manuals and robot management,” Heinla says. “The grocer does not need to be a robotics expert. We effectively built a whole system for autonomous logistics at scale.”San Antonio-based H-E-B is doing its own test of last-mile delivery robots with the help of autonomous-vehicle delivery company Avride. That company’s vehicles can carry up to 10 items, have a service radius of approximately 1 mile and are being piloted at H-E-B’s Mueller store on the northeast side of Avride’s hometown of Austin, Texas. Automation in the Supply ChainFurther into the grocery supply chain, Avidbots is offering cleaning robots specifically for distribution centers. As Sheikh explains, robotics has reshaped grocery distribution centers by addressing labor shortages, improving throughput and boosting accuracy, as well as automating repetitive tasks like picking, palletizing and inventory control.“Distribution has the added requirement of safety and compliance, something that robotics can provide for peace of mind,” he says. “Don’t forget labor. Our autonomous scrubbers are a prime example — seamlessly integrating into operations to ensure clean, safe environments while freeing staff for other priorities.”For its part, Hatfield, England-based Ocado Group has developed AI-powered robotic arms that can help grocers level up in e-commerce and logistics. The company’s systems are powered by advanced applications of machine learning, which is capable of making smart decisions on the fly, and can pick, pack and organize stock within fulfillment centers directly from the grid.Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart, meanwhile, has been engaged in long-term efforts with Wilmington, Mass.-based Symbotic to equip the retailer’s entire regional distribution center network with robotics and software automation. Symbotic will help Walmart develop, build and deploy an advanced robotics platform solution that will accelerate online pickup and delivery options at stores.In a similar move, Saint Ann, Mo.-based discount grocery chain Save A Lot late last year teamed with New York-based Fabric to open a Brooklyn, N.Y., micro-fulfillment center that uses Fabric’s high-density, high-throughput cube-based robotic storage system to automate grocery delivery fulfillment operations.Looking ForwardRobotics and automation are changing rapidly, and over the next five years, Simbe’s Bogolea expects robotics to play a key role in transforming grocery stores into living data-driven ecosystems that can constantly evolve and adapt to meet the unique needs of the communities they serve. “Across retail verticals and formats, robots will power better store team workflows and customer shopping experiences, from supporting planogram optimization and dynamic pricing, to enabling automated reordering and last-mile fulfillment,” he says.Sheikh believes the biggest change over the next five to 10 years will be collaboration, and the ability of robots to work seamlessly alongside human teams, as well as with other robots. “In distribution, expect more widespread AI-enabled robots performing tasks as menial as cleaning or palletizing, all the way up to coordinating with other systems for end-to-end automation,” he foresees. In a pointed look toward the future, Brain Corp. has launched Project Brawn, which focuses on AI-powered robotic stocking and picking. As such, Pinn expects future robots not only to detect issues, but also to fix them, sharing that the company envisions “robots that stock products onto shelves, correct shelf placement issues and fulfil customer orders.”Starship’s Heinla, meanwhile, expects robots to be literally everywhere in the next five to 10 years. “Right now, all of these things are at the level where they work but have not taken over the whole world yet, because it takes time to take over the whole world,” he observes. “It’s very much underway. In five or 10 years, I think the world will have changed.”

Grocers’ Guide to Robotics

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