Sam’s Club will deploy automated floor wiping robots at all of its locations in the U.S.

In the past six months, as companies look for ways to increase (and possibly replace) human workers, there has been a considerable acceleration in the choice of robotics and automation. This appeal is undoubtedly obvious during the massive shutdown caused by the pandemic.
Sam’s Club has been in the field of robotic floor cleaning longer, and has deployed Tennant’s T7AMR scrubbers in multiple locations. But the Wal-Mart-owned bulk retailer announced this week that it will add 372 more stores this year and apply this technology to all of its 599 US stores.
The robot can be driven manually, but it can be operated autonomously by joining Brain Corp.’s service. Considering the huge scale of this type of warehouse store, this is certainly a welcome feature. However, perhaps more interesting is that the software can perform dual tasks while using mopping robots to check shelf inventory.
Wal-Mart, the parent company of Sam’s Club, is already using robots to take inventory in its own stores. In January of this year, the company announced that it would add Bossa Nova robots to another 650 locations, bringing the total number in the United States to 1,000. The Tennant/Brain Corp. system is still in the experimental stage, although there is a lot to say about a robot that can effectively perform these two tasks during off-peak hours. As with store cleaning, inventory is a very difficult task in a store of this size.