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Welcome to Day 1543 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomThe Robots Are Coming \u2013 Ask GrampsWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1543 of our Trek, and our focus on Fridays is the future technological and societal advances, so we call it Futuristic Fridays. My personality is one that has always been very future-oriented. Since my childhood, I have yearned for the exploration and discovery of new technologies and advancements for the future. I grew up with the original Star Trek series, and even today, as I am now on my 65th revolution around the sun, I still dream of traveling in space. Each week we will explore rapidly converging technologies and advancements, which will radically change our lives. At times, the topics may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but each area that we explore is already well on its way of becoming a reality over the next couple of decades.
To keep with our theme of \u201cAsk Gramps,\u201d I will put our weekly topics in the form of a question to get us on track. This week\u2019s question is - \u201cHey Gramps, there has been robotics used in factories for years helping to streamline manufacturing. How soon will robotics be a major impact in the retail sector?\u201d
The Robots Are Coming!
For our episode today, I am using some information from Peter Diamandis\u2019s blog and newly released book \u201cThe Future is Faster Than You Think.\u201d
The robots are coming! On our sidewalks, in our skies, in our every store\u2026 Over the next decade, robots will enter the mainstream of retail. The numbers back it up: in the last eight years, the global retail robotics market is projected to grow by order of magnitude, from $4.78 billion in 2018 to $41.67 billion in 2026.
As countless robots work behind the scenes to stock shelves, serve customers, and deliver products to our doorstep, the speed of retail will continue to increase. These changes were already underway, and the pandemic has accelerated them.
Let\u2019s dive in...
Robot DeliveryOn August 3rd, 2016, Domino\u2019s Pizza introduced the Domino\u2019s Robotic Unit, or \u201cDRU\u201d for short. The first home delivery pizza robot, the DRU looks like a cross between R2-D2 and an oversized microwave.
LIDAR and GPS sensors help it navigate, while temperature sensors keep hot food hot and cold food cold. Now called \u201cDOM\u201d (which is also the name of Domino\u2019s chatbot for placing orders), the robot has been undergoing trial runs in ten countries, including New Zealand, France, and Germany. The August 2016 debut was critical, as it was the first time we\u2019d seen robotic home delivery. It won\u2019t be the last. A dozen or so different delivery bots are fast entering the market.
Starship Technologies, for instance, a startup created by Skype founders Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla, has a general-purpose home delivery robot. Right now, the system is an array of cameras and GPS sensors. Still, upcoming models will include microphones, speakers, and even the ability to communicate with customers via AI-driven natural language processing. Since 2016, Starship has already carried out 500,000 deliveries across more than 20 countries.
Along similar lines, Nuro\u2014co-founded by Jiajun Zhu, one of the engineers who helped develop Google\u2019s self-driving car\u2014has a miniature self-driving car of its own. Half the sedan\u2019s size, the Nuro looks like a toaster on wheels, except with a mission. This toaster was designed to carry cargo\u2014originally about 12 bags of groceries \u2014 which it has been doing for select Kroger stores since 2018. Two years later, the company has a new...