Robots tackle sorting task that stumped Walmart for years
Walmart is installing small wheeled robots equipped with motion and obstacle sensors across more than a dozen of its warehouses, part of a decade-long, multibillion-dollar campaign to automate the company’s distribution network, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Logistics Report.
The robots are designed to pull individual items out of cardboard boxes to send out individually. The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Nassauer wrote that the task is “a no-brainer for Walmart’s humans” but turned into one of the many challenges bedeviling the company’s automation quest.
Walmart relies on more than 140,000 warehouse workers to do jobs that aren’t easy, but don’t seem all that complicated either — until you try to teach robots to do them, Nassauer wrote. Eventually, Walmart and its robotics partner designed small robots on wheels with motion and obstacle sensors, and are now installing them in more than a dozen warehouses.
“What makes the automation campaign so tricky is keeping warehouses in service while they are re-engineered,” said Rob Montgomery, head of supply-chain operations for Walmart U.S.
Many of the nation’s largest retailers are struggling through similar automation transitions as pressure grows to boost sales and ship merchandise to homes faster without spending a fortune on additional workers or facilities. The rapid growth of Amazon — which is ahead of its retail rivals on automation — has dialed up the urgency.
Estimated container imports into the U.S. in September came in below August’s 2.3 million 20-foot-equivalent units but ran 8.2% above the year-earlier month, according to the National Retail Federation’s Global Port Tracker.