Instacart Bets on Robots To Shrink Ranks of 500,000 Gig Shoppers (bloomberg.com) 43
Instacart has an audacious plan to replace its army of gig shoppers with robots -- part of a long-term strategy to cut costs and put its relationship with supermarket chains on a sustainable footing. From a report: The plan, detailed in documents reviewed by Bloomberg, involves building automated fulfillment centers around the U.S., where hundreds of robots would fetch boxes of cereal and cans of soup while humans gather produce and deli products. Some facilities would be attached to existing grocery stores while larger standalone centers would process orders for several locations, according to the documents, which were dated July and December.
Despite working on the strategy for more than a year, however, the company has yet to sign up a single supermarket chain. Instacart had planned to begin testing the fulfillment centers later this year, the documents show. But the company has fallen behind schedule, according to people familiar with the situation. And though the documents mention asking several automation providers to build the technology, Instacart hasn't settled on any, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. In February, the Financial Times reported on elements of the strategy and said Instacart in early 2020 sent out requests for proposals to five robotics companies.
An Instacart spokeswoman said the company was busy buttressing its operations during the pandemic, when it signed up 300,000 new gig workers in a matter of weeks, bringing the current total to more than 500,000. But the delays in getting the automation strategy off the ground could potentially undermine plans to go public this year. Investors know robots will play a critical role in modernizing the $1.4 trillion U.S. grocery industry.
Despite working on the strategy for more than a year, however, the company has yet to sign up a single supermarket chain. Instacart had planned to begin testing the fulfillment centers later this year, the documents show. But the company has fallen behind schedule, according to people familiar with the situation. And though the documents mention asking several automation providers to build the technology, Instacart hasn't settled on any, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. In February, the Financial Times reported on elements of the strategy and said Instacart in early 2020 sent out requests for proposals to five robotics companies.
An Instacart spokeswoman said the company was busy buttressing its operations during the pandemic, when it signed up 300,000 new gig workers in a matter of weeks, bringing the current total to more than 500,000. But the delays in getting the automation strategy off the ground could potentially undermine plans to go public this year. Investors know robots will play a critical role in modernizing the $1.4 trillion U.S. grocery industry.
Human automation. (Score:4, Insightful)
Investors know robots will play a critical role in modernizing the $1.4 trillion U.S. grocery industry.
As Walmart and Amazon demonstrate people are still more versatile and cheaper.
Re:Human automation. (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
That is of course different from "shopping" in aisles next to regular human shoppers who are messing everything up. From the article it looks like they have their eye on both: "Some facilities would be attached to existing grocery stores while larger standalone centers would process orders for several locations."
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Well sort of. Amazon has a LOT of automation its warehouses.
By turning all the toilets into water bottles?
Not exactly what I would call "automation", especially when the next efficiency level will be diapers.
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My first visit to an Amazon Fresh a few weeks ago store was less than encouraging. The Dash cart is neat, but it got confused when I had to rearrange things to make them fit (the basket area is small). The employees seemed annoyed that there were actual shoppers in the store. I had to be fairly obnoxious to get their attention when trying to make my way down the aisle past the pallet jacks and the personal shoppers (or whatever Amazon calls them).
And then I had to cart several things back into the store
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People sometimes wonder what it is about a CEO that makes them worth billions of dollars. And sure some of that is just them being members of the ruling class. But in terms of what they actually do for a living a huge part of it is figuring out how to reduce the cost of Labor. A large part of that is eliminating jobs. Your job.
EMPLOYMENT == SLAVERY (Score:2, Insightful)
To them, you are nothing but a line item on a balance sheet.
Pwn thyself, as an S-Corp or as an LLC, else prepare for a life of slavery in service of your crapitalist/kkk0mmunist overlords.
Products are not designed for robots (Score:2)
Products are not packaged to be handled by robots. You would need to have manufacturers on board to make versions of their products that can easily be grabbed and handled by robots. No manufacturer would bother with that. There is not standard for robot-friendly packaging.
Re:Products are not designed for robotrs (Score:3)
Products are not meant to be scanned by lasers. You would need to have manufacturers on board to make versions of their products that can easily be scanned and identified by lasers. No manufacturer would bother with that. There is no standard for barcodes.
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You haven't been to an Amazon Fresh store. The carts have a ring of cameras on the inside that scan the items as you put them in the cart. You check out using the Amazon App on your phone. It's surprisingly easy and has worked well every time I've used it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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There is no standard for barcodes
I guess you mean the location on packaging, there should be one on every side. Larger heavy items already mostly have them on opposing sides so you don't have to move a bulky package all around searching for that one spot.
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No, I was referring to the fact that, once upon a time, there was no UPC standard; yet manufacturers absolutely did get on board, because it was either that or be dropped by stores/distributors.
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There is no standard for barcodes.
UPC/EAN beg to differ. Pretty much everything I've bought in the past 20 years has had a standardized barcode.
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But there is a market for frustration-free packaging.
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Crazy people (Score:3, Insightful)
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Thank you fermion for telling me where I should be shopping for companionship, in addition to groceries! Can I get an Handy behind the asparagus display?
Re:Crazy people (Score:4, Informative)
Big words for the guy without a metal exoskeleton or high-torque servos.
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Typo in the Title (Score:2)
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You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot!
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/Oblg. The editors literally had one job -- they couldn't even get that right! /s
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Don't worry - many of us don't know what an instacart or a gig shopper is either.
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Where’s amazon? (Score:2)
If they are better checking expiration dates (Score:3)
I've used Ncart a couple time now.
Once the fulfillment had not just expired items, one of them was fulfilled with meat 3 days beyond "best by/use by" dates. I did allegedly get my $5 back.
Next time I got some lunch meat, one was good for 30 days, the other was good for about 4 days after I bought it.
If "AI"/bots could select items that were not expired (or soon to be expired), I'd be OK with it.
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That's nothing. A couple of weeks ago, we bought some cookie dough from the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Sunnyvale, only to discover that it was two (or was it three) *months* past its expiration date. Worse, no one seemed even slightly alarmed when we told them.
Expired food products on shelves won't stop being a problem until a few high-profile people die of food poisoning and regulators start cracking down on stores for having out-of-date products on the shelves. As long as there are no random spot
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For most products those expire dates are only points when the product starts losing quality - starts losing color, gets to hard or soft, doesn't dissolve properly etc. Only for very few of them (unprocessed meat being prime example) exceeding those dates is likely to cause any health problems.
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They are definitely not synonymous. https://www.fsai.ie/uploadedFi... [www.fsai.ie]
Best Before = May not taste as good after this date.
Use By = Unsafe to eat after this date.
Good Luck Instacart (Score:3)
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This makes no sense (Score:3)
This makes no sense on multiple levels.
What they are trying to automate is the labor done by shoppers as they move products from shelves to shopping carts. But that labor is
- hard to automate from a robotics standpoint (unstructured problem domain)
- even harder to automate in terms of getting the shopper what they actually want (no apples; substitute canned beets y/n?)
- already free to the grocery store
What you need to do this is a grocery chain + robotics. The grocery chains won't do it because it cannibalizes their core business; the robotics companies won't do it because it is a hard problem with no clear ROI, and if a grocer and a robotics company did get together and do it why should Instacart get a cut?
It reminds me of the early days of the web, when everyone had an idea for a web site that would make them loads of money...if someone else would just build it for them.
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pipe dream (for the near future) (Score:2)
I'm sure they'd like to get rid of 500k "team members", but it's no trivial task to build robots and integrate them into random stores to pull items, complete the checkout process, then get them to customers. I'm not saying its impossible, but good luck doing this in the next decade!
just like uber (Score:2)