Wal-Mart IRL Store With Virtual Shelves in the Store

This picture through the ACM in the Chicago Tribune.  Shows a scene in Wal-Mart's new smart store, called their IRL.

Appears to be a virtual shelf placed on an end cap to demonstrate or test the placement of product on shelf.   The quality of the product images looks quite low,  but I imagine could be easily improved.    We did similar things to test products on shelf using images, cameras and consumer behavior in contexts in real store environments.  (Thread to be updated)

See also:

https://www.retailwire.com/discussion/walmarts-intelligent-retail-lab-store-runs-on-ai/

An Initial Look at Wal-Mart's Future Store

FastCompany takes an initial look.  Different it seems, from what we did in our future store.  Less direct research and more, promotion of themselves as a forward looking company.   Good piece, expect to see more on the topic.

Walmart’s AI-powered store of the future is nothing like Amazon Go
There are cameras. There is AI. And the similarities end there.    By MarkWilson

When Amazon launched its first Go store in 2018, the public lined up around the block to see the future of retail: a new experience where you could walk in, grab something off the shelf, and walk out. Sure, there were cameras on the ceiling and AI on computers tracking silently from above, but the promise was convenience through automation–maybe not The Jetsons, but a better 7/11 for certain.

Now Walmart has shared its version of the future of brick-and-mortar retail, the Intelligent Retail Lab, or IRL for short. Unlike Go, it doesn’t feature any futuristic user experience. There’s no automated checkout or similar whiz-bang head turner that people will Instagram about. Instead, IRL can track Walmart’s inventory in real time with unprecedented efficiency, making sure every item on every shelf is always in stock. .... " 

See also in the Chicago Tribune another report on this.

Wal-Mart AI Store of the Future Opens to Public

Good to see this, and new competition with Amazon in brick and mortar.  Look forward to learning about other technical details.  How about their Fresh Block chain?  More for now at the link.

Walmart unveils an A.I.-powered store of the future, now open to the public   By Sarah Perez@sarahintampa in TechCrunch

Walmart this morning unveiled a new “store of the future” and test grounds for emerging technologies, including A.I.-enabled cameras and interactive displays. The store, a working concept called the Intelligent Retail Lab — or “IRL” for short — operates out of a Walmart Neighborhood Market in Levittown, New York.

The store is open to customers and is one of Walmart’s busiest Neighborhood Market stores containing over 30,000 items, the retailer says, which allows it to test out technology in a real world environment.

Similar to Amazon Go’s convenience stores, the store has a suite of cameras mounted in the ceiling. But unlike Amazon Go, which is a grab-and-go store with smaller square footage, Walmart’s IRL spans 50,000 square feet of retail space and is staffed by over 100 employees.

Plus, in Walmart’s case, these A.I.-powered cameras are not being used to determine what items customers are buying in order to automatically charge them. It still has traditional checkout stations. Instead, the cameras will monitor inventory levels to determine, for example, if staff needs to bring out more meat from the backroom refrigerators to restock the shelves, or if some fresh items have been sitting too long on the shelf and need to be pulled. ... "