Walmart is collaborating with Five Elements Robotics on a new way to shop using carts that can be helpful, and were featured at the Bloomberg Technology Conference.
It’s part of an emerging chapter of the ongoing war between brick-and-mortar retailers and the king of fast-delivery online sellers: Amazon.com. The announcement that Walmart is considering robotic shopping carts came from Five Elements CEO Wendy Roberts last week at the Bloomberg Technology Conference. For its part, Walmart is being more hush-hush about the project, declining to comment on the evaluation process.
Walmart is struggling with falling sales with profits predicted to be off by more than 10 percent this year.
Five Element Robotics makes the Budgee personal robot. The gadget is essentially a personal shopping cart that can follow its operator around automatically.