Cameras with wide angle lenses every 10 feet on opposing shelves. Still cheaper. Much less maintenance. Software assembles a seamless view of every shelf in the store in real time. No need to wait for the bot to wander by.
Now you've created the need to re-wire shelves for power + data, map the cameras to store positions, keep people from stealing them, maintain/replace them, etc. I'm not at all convinced that would be cheaper in fully burdened cost than a few roving robots.
Cameras every 10 feet on each side of an aisle. Now you're talking dozens and dozens of cameras. Definitely not less expensive than the glorified Roomba they have roaming the aisles that I've seen.
>Another said the robot is currently broken and stored on the charging dock, a $35,000 decoration.
Thats a lot of cameras you could buy right there. I was figuring around 100 for a medium sized store. (40 ft isles, 12 of them, 2 cameras every 10 feet). How much is a little wifi camera that can send back a few images per minute?
>How much is a little wifi camera that can send back a few images per minute?
I was discussing cameras with someone who derives a non-negligible portion of their income from streaming 4k video. The "gold standard" as far as they are concerned is a $60 Logitech webcam. Swap out the cord for a wifi chip, swap out the consumer housing for something that clips to a shelf and can be secured with a self tapping screw and power it with a cheap solar panel and I still can't see it coming in above $100.
