Simbe Robotics today announced the launch of Tally 3.0 – the latest design iteration of its autonomous retail robot, Tally. Simbe’s unique, human-centered approach to design has set Tally apart from competitors since its initial debut in 2015. With enhancements to the robot’s optical system, greater durability and maneuverability to ensure cost-effective top performance, and the introduction of an embedded data processor, Tally 3.0 continues to lead the pack and remains the most innovative, efficient retail robot on the market.
Optics
Simbe’s multi-pronged approach to enhanced optics combines new autofocus capabilities with more cutting-edge sensors that improve depth perception, enabling Tally to efficiently analyze inventory in every aspect of the retail environment. Simbe strategically added height to Tally’s slender base, making room for additional Intel™ RealSense® depth and RGB cameras to ‘see’ more products on shelf – including top shelf overstock items. Tally’s new, autofocus optical system accurately captures shelf tags and reads data from up to 30 inches away, enhancing the robot’s recognition accuracy to nearly 99% and allowing it to do its job without slowing its traversal speed. These thoughtful additions to Tally’s design enable the robot to precisely capture inventory data from any store fixture or variable shelving unit, from products on standard shelving to items stacked in coolers in the freezer aisles.
Engineering
Additionally, Simbe has leveraged the newest mobile technology to create a more cost-effective and resilient Tally robot with the same compact, slim form. Designed for long-term performance with minimal maintenance, Tally is now five times as resilient, increasing Tally’s lifetime traversal capabilities to more than 5,000 miles per robot – and at an aggressively lower cost to scale.
Hybrid Data Processing
As Tally traverses store aisles and captures real-time shelf data, the inventory information is then sent to Simbe’s proprietary, secure cloud platform that enables store teams to stitch together high-definition 3D images of the store shelves. Tally 3.0 features the NVIDIA Jetson GPU-accelerated embedded computing platform allowing the next iteration of Tally to be even more efficient by running its deep computer vision and AI algorithms on the edge. This additional processing capability and unique hybrid approach improves the efficiency of Tally’s data capture, providing Simbe’s customers with shelf information more quickly and seamlessly, as well as helps minimize the costs of capturing and uploading the robot’s data to retailers’ back-end systems.
“The amount of critical data and valuable insights that Tally continues to provide is immeasurable,” said Dave Steck, Vice President of IT Infrastructure and Application Development at Schnuck Markets, Inc. “Our long-standing partnership with Simbe has enabled us to provide better decision making throughout our supply chain while offering store teams a powerful tool to ensure products are available for our customers.”
Tally has been deployed in more than a dozen of the top 250 global retailers in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Through work with retail partners including Carrefour, Decathlon Sporting Goods, Groupe Casino, Giant Eagle, and Schnuck Markets, Simbe is building one of the most valuable datasets in the retail ecosystem.
