The Amazon Go store set the tone for the future of shopping.

It’s a store free of staff that uses AI to track your purchases and payments.

The rest of America is also keen to get on board with tech-enhanced shopping now, which is probably why Marty happened.

Retailers Stop & Shop installed Marty – a $35 000 giant, grey, aisle-patrolling robot with googly eyes – at more than 200 stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.

According to Mashable, thanks to Marty, food shopping now comes with “unprecedented levels of anxiety and absurdity”.

Marty wears the following description below its googly eyes:

This store is monitored by Marty for your safety. Marty is an autonomous robot that uses image capturing technology to report spills, debris, and other potential hazards to store employees to improve your shopping experience.

In reality, Marty notices when something is out of place, but doesn’t actually do anything about it.

Marty is advertised as an aisle-sweeping superhero, but it’s simply a messenger that shouts about a problem until a more capable human comes and removes whatever the hazard may be.

Naturally, people like this Twitter user are confused:

Apparently my supermarket has just gotten a robot. Its name is Marty. It detects spills. Doesn’t clean them, just starts shouting if it sees one. pic.twitter.com/xnRuV8LBCU

— Jennifer Jordan (@jennlynnjordan) July 23, 2019

Marty is also crap at detecting danger:

The other day, we heard the googly eyed and friendly stop& shop robot alerting (in two different languages) of a found hazard! We braved it out to find out what this hazard was: a bottle cap! #robotLifeProblems pic.twitter.com/h965nscTy7

— farnazIr (@farnazIr) July 18, 2019

A press release from earlier this year states that the robots are supposed to “enable associates to spend more time serving and interfacing with customers”.

..but one of the robot’s major flaws that its sensors appear to treat each hazard with the same level of caution. A harmless bottle cap or errant piece of cilantro will elicit the same response as a spill of clear liquid that someone could genuinely slip and injure themselves on, which means that in certain cases an employee may have to take time that could be spent interacting with a customer to walk across the store and grab a puny little grape that escaped a bag. Seems counterproductive!

When Marty isn’t losing it over a stray twist tie on the floor, he’s lurking ominously behind customers.

Met Marty the robot in my local Stop & Shop last night. He followed me around the store. Still not sure how to feel about it. #retail pic.twitter.com/a6C7GnNADn

— meaghanbrophy (@meaghanbrophy) February 28, 2019

Remember that debate where Trump lurked behind Hillary Clinton like a creeper? That’s Marty.

CHRIST Marty leave me ALONE pic.twitter.com/iVExOopLuU

— Jennifer Jordan (@jennlynnjordan) July 23, 2019

Ultimately, Marty doesn’t seem to be particularly useful, cost-effective, or efficient.

I thank the food gods every day that I get Daily Dish delivered, which frees me from the hassle and social interaction of going to a grocery store – and we don’t even have robots here.

I can’t imagine the horror of having to navigate Marty as well.

[source:mashable]