SAN FRANCISCO — Global retailers lose nearly $450 billion annually as a result of out-of-stock items, empty shelves, and other in-store inconsistencies. To address this problem, Simbe Robotics announced the availability of its first product, Tally, the world’s first robotic autonomous shelf-auditing and analytics solution.

The system consists of one or more mobile robots that can autonomously traverse large brick-and-mortar retail environments to capture, report, and analyze the state and availability of merchandise and help ensure compliance with the store’s planogram — the ideal placement of products on shelves — in order to maximize sales.

Tally performs the repetitive and laborious tasks of auditing shelves for out-of-stock items, low-stock items, misplaced items, and pricing errors. Tally operates safely during normal store hours alongside shoppers and employees.

Tally can audit shelves cheaper, more frequently, and significantly faster than existing processes and with near-perfect accuracy. The product also requires no infrastructure changes to the store.

Combined with Tally’s cloud-powered software and application programming interface (API), retailers can gain unprecedented insight into the state of their stores. This information can be used to streamline store performance, maximize customer satisfaction, increase sales, and reduce operational expenditures.

“When it comes to the retail industry, shopper experience is everything. If a product is unavailable at the time the shopper wants to buy it, the retailer has missed an opportunity and disappointed their customer,” said Brad Bogolea, CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Simbe Robotics. “Tally helps retailers address these challenges by providing more precise and timely analysis of the state of in-store merchandise and freeing up staff to focus on customer service.”

To date, retailers have tried relying on their IT systems and manual labor to account for product availability. This approach, however, is both costly and inaccurate. According to Aberdeen Group, 70 percent of retailers rate themselves “average” or “below average” with respect to inventory management.

Tally provides retailers with visibility and insight into the state of store merchandise. With Tally, retailers can benefit from:

• High-accuracy inventory count of front-facing items
• Out-of-stock and low-stock detection
• Identification of misplaced items
• Identification of incorrectly facing or oriented items
• Product price tag validation
• Third-party supplier compliance and vendor management

Tally is equipped with a charging dock that it can autonomously navigate back to between scans allowing for continuous operation. The robot includes a suite of sensors enabling it to operate reliably and safely in retail environments while capturing information on the state of merchandise in the store. The data captured by the robot is sent securely to the cloud for processing and analysis. The data is then exposed through both an API and front-end application alongside specific recommendations to improve store performance to key stakeholders.

In addition, Tally can be integrated into the retailers’ existing IT systems. Tally is built upon the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS).

Tally stands 38 in. tall and has an adjustable and modular mast of sensors for capturing shelf data. The overall height can vary depending on the retailer’s shelf height requirements.

The robot weighs approximately 30 lb. and can be easily moved to an optimal docking location within a retail store’s floor plan.

Tally is currently in trial with several North American retailers. Please contact [email protected] for more information regarding pricing and pilot program inquires.

Simbe Robotics builds automation solutions for the retail industry and is backed by leading hardware investors Lemnos Labs and SOSV. The company was founded in 2014. For more information, please visit http://www.simberobotics.com.