There seems to be an emerging wave of robotic companies and sooner or later, don't be surprised to be walking alongside an autonomous robot.  Now, Simbe Robotics unveils Tally, the world's first fully autonomous robotic shelf auditing and analytics solution for the retail industry.

According to Business Wire, Tally was designed to help retailers decrease inventory issues, increase revenue and improve customer satisfaction. 

It was reported that global retailers lose around $450 billion annually as a result of out-of-stock items and store inconsistencies with their inventories.  The Simbe Robotics has unveiled a autonomous robot, Tally, that would address these problems.

Tally will be able to address inconsistencies inside your store by navigating large retail environment to capture, report, and analyze the state and availability of merchandise.  It also ensures compliance with the store's planogram, this is the ideal placement of products on shelves to maximize sales.  Tally does the repetitive and painstaking job of auditing shelves, looking for out-of-stock items, low stock and misplaced items, and pricing errors.  It operates safely during regular store hours alongside employees and shoppers.

Tall is reported to audit shelves significantly faster than existing processes, with almost perfect accuracy.  It is powered by cloud-power platform and API that gives retailers information and insight as to the over-all state of their stores.  This can be used to streamline store performance, maximize customer satisfaction, increase sales and most importantly reduce operational expenditures.

"When it comes to the retail industry, shopper experience is everything. If a product is unavailable at the time the shopper wants to buy it, the retailer has missed an opportunity and disappointed their customer," according to Brad Bogolea, CEO and Co-founder of Simbe Robotics. "Tally helps retailers address these challenges by providing more precise and timely analysis of the state of in-store merchandise and freeing up staff to focus on customer service."

 Currently, retailers are relying on their IT systems and manual labour to account inventory.  However this proves to be both costly and inaccurate.  Simbe is offering Tally as a service, essentially renting it for a monthly fee.  It actually works out to be cheaper than using human employees. 

Do you think robots like Tally will eventually replace man power in retail stores?  Let us know your thoughts by leaving your comments below.