Robotics moves from industry to retail, says CEO of GIC Brasil

Robots have been with us for some time. The global population of industrial robots stands at 3.5 million units, more than the population of many cities. Last year, half a million robots were installed in industry worldwide. They are already seen mainly in the organization of retail stocks. But now they are tending to enter daily store operations, said Brazilian businessman Irineu Fernandes, CEO of GIC Brasil, during a talk at the Fenalco (National Federation of Colombian Merchants) Góndola fair. Robotics was one of the trends for the future of technology and retail presented by the speaker who opened Colombia’s largest supermarket fair. Robots are used to reduce costs and speed up stock operations. With the advance of artificial intelligence and vision algorithms capable of capturing and analyzing images, they are gaining new functions in store operations. “This is a movement with no turning back. We ourselves, in Brazil, have developed our own robot, capable of seeing the situation on the shelves and checking labels,” Fernandes says. He was talking about Mirus, a machine recently developed by GIC Lab, the company’s innovation and technology laboratory. Mirus is part of a system called GondolEYE, made up of fixed and mobile cameras. The mobile cameras are embedded in the Mirus units and connect directly to the automated management system to search for faults and non-conformities in the display of products on the shelves. As a result, the use of robots in functions such as checking frees up retail employees for core activities such as serving customers. The Brazilian entrepreneur’s presentation brought together a large number of entrepreneurs, executives and professionals from Latin American retail and industry present at the fair. Fernandes presented a series of innovations that are likely to grow in the coming years. Some examples are the integration of physical and digital operations, people’s growing ability to use new technologies and purchasing channels, the personalization of the consumer journey, augmented and virtual reality and the metaverse, as well as cashless – or even contactless – purchases and deliveries. This is because consumers will increasingly seek convenience and practicality in their purchases, the speaker explained. He cited the strong advance of formats such as click and collect in retail, where purchases are made digitally and picked up at collection points. Fernandes added that condominiums are already seeing the arrival of formats that include the use of “smart lockers”, where the delivery person deposits the order placed online, and then the resident opens it and accesses the products. Drones and robots are also being experimented with to deliver parcels in many international markets. In this modality, the buyer no longer makes contact with the delivery person, but receives an autonomous delivery. As a consequence of another trend – which was the explosion of online orders during the pandemic – retail chains and marketplaces are competing on the speed of order delivery, where autonomous formats may have an advantage.