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The Simbe Spot camera is designed to be located in a fixed location over a section of the store. | Credit: Simbe Robotics
Simbe Robotics Inc., maker of the Tally mobile robot for retail inventory, has launched the Tally Spot camera to expand the visibility of real-time inventory management. According to Simbe co-founder and CEO Brad Bogolea, the camera is a response of customer feedback.
The Tally Spot system integrates with existing retail software and workflows, said the South San Francisco-based company.
“Our robot often traverses these stores three to five times a day,” stated Bogolea. “There’s a particular handful of categories where you might want some more frequent data. So this type of technology opens us up to have more perpetual or higher frequency data from these areas.”
The Simbe Spot is a new area camera about the size of a deck of cards. | Credit: Simbe Robotics
Tally Spot cameras designed for easy integration
The Tally Spot cameras can be easily provisioned and connected to a retailer’s Wi-Fi network, similar to the deployment process for the Tally autonomous mobile robot (AMR). This allows the Tally Spot data to be quickly integrated into the Simbe store inventory software.
Retailers can immediately use Simbe’s iOS and Android apps to interact with the data from Tally Spot, said the company. This allows store managers to identify out-of-stock items, product-placement issues, and overall store performance.
The camera can be powered by either a battery or through a wired connection, depending on the deployment situation.
The Tally Spot data can also be easily reconciled with point-of-sale data to help identify shrinkage and theft, claimed Simbe. If products are detected leaving the shelf but not going through the checkout, this can flag potential losses for the retailer to investigate.
Likewise, a store can deploy Tally Spot to look at the lower shelf of a shopping cart for large items and either ID and scan to support the clerk or trigger loss prevention.
Bogolea described one additional scenario.
“In areas where you have higher theft, you may not want to put all of the inventory on the shelf at a given time,” he said. “So with having a perpetual sensor in this type of scenario — let’s say it’s baby formula. As units would come off the shelf, we would detect units coming off the shelf, we would query, and [we’d] issue a restocking notification.”
The Tally Spot camera can be placed in the checkout lane to look under shopping carts for large items. | Credit: Simbe Robotics
Simbe offers continuous inventory data
Unlike Tally, which is mobile and uses Intel RealSense to scan an entire store several times a day, the continuous data from Tally Spot, especially in high-velocity areas, could provide better visibility into actual store inventory levels, said Simbe. This can trigger automated restocking notifications to ensure critical products are always available.
Spot can also provide real-time inventory data to improve the fidelity of the retailer’s e-commerce systems, improving the accuracy of online product availability for customers.
Leading wholesalers such as BJ’s Wholesale Club, innovative grocers like Schnuck Markets and Wakefern Food Corp., major farm suppliers like Country Supplier, and many more are increasingly investing in AI-powered systems like Simbe’s. The company asserted that it can improve the in-store experience for shoppers and associates while setting a new standard for operational excellence.
In addition to the mobile Tally and the new Spot cameras, Simbe also offers RFID scanning technology onboard Tally. This can be used to track soft-tagged apparel, footwear, small appliances, electronics, sporting goods, and more – providing a near real-time view of the location and activity of all RFID-tagged merchandise within a store.
Simbe was a 2024 RBR50 Innovation Award winner for its scale out with BJ’s Wholesale Club.
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