As retail stores increasingly integrate robotic technologies to perform various mundane tasks—such as restocking shelves, unloading deliveries, and mopping up spills—questions about their optimal design have come to take on nearly as much importance as discussions of their implications for retail workers. The actual implementations of these robots have provided new evidence about how people interact with them in the real world. Primarily, they appear to want to humanize them. Workers introduced to the robots in their stores have added human physical traits, like big fake eyes, to machines, as well as given them pet names like Marty and Grover. Consumers similarly express preferences for robots whose appearances make them appear cute rather than solely mechanical. In response, the companies designing the robots have made some concessions. For example, one cleaning robot features a cushy seat and cup holder, signaling that it can be driven by a person, even though it mainly does the work autonomously. Such features facilitate people’s acceptance of robots, which is not guaranteed. Without such appealing elements, consumers often react to robots with caution and suspicion; they simply look too strange in a familiar retail environment. Furthermore, retail employees tend to worry more about being replaced by robotic technologies than they do about handing over some of their tasks to good old Marty, which just happens to be a robot. But when Marty the robot—which detects spills in about 500 Stop & Shop and Giant grocery stores—with its silly googly eyes, becomes part of the store environment, both store employees and customers might find it so appealing that they even throw it a party to mark the one-year anniversary of when it was introduced.
Source: Michael Corkery, “Should Robots Have a Face?” The New York Times, February 26, 2020; Shoshy Ciment, “An Adorable Grocery Robot Is Celebrating His First Birthday with a Party in Hundreds of Stores—and It Reveals a Dystopian Truth about the Future of Retail,” Business Insider, January 21, 2020.