Auchan Retail Portugal, one of Europe’s largest grocery retailers, and Trax, a leading provider of computer vision and analytics solutions for retail, today unveiled an agreement to deploy Trax’s suite of autonomous shelf monitoring solutions, including robots, across Auchan Retail’s entire grocery retail network of 34 supermarkets and hypermarkets in Portugal. The project starts in the Auchan Alfragide hypermarket in Lisbon.
As part of the agreement, Trax’s autonomous robots, developed in partnership with German robotics company MetraLabs, will be progressively deployed in Auchan stores across the country. The robots will move around the stores up to three times daily to capture photos of every shelf and aisle, which are then digitized at scale, using Trax’s proprietary computer vision and Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and converted into reports with actionable metrics and insights. These reports are delivered via a mobile app to store staff, enabling them to analyze, prioritize and resolve shelf issues such as out-of-stocks and pricing compliance issues more quickly and efficiently.
Roy Moussa, SVP Commercial Retail Solutions at Trax, said, “Computer vision and IoT in retail is transforming store operations into a data-driven and frictionless process. Trax’s partnership with Auchan demonstrates the confidence that top global retailers place in our industry-leading portfolio of in-store execution solutions, market measurement, crowd services and analytics to ensure every store is made more productive, profitable and future-proof, especially in these challenging times.”
Andre Vieira, Digital Director at Auchan Retail Portugal, said, “Innovation, through the search for digital strategies focused on people and improving customer service is one of Auchan’s great bets. With the introduction of autonomous robots, Auchan wants to improve productivity in stores and optimize the supply chain, freeing employees to focus 100% on the mission of providing a better customer experience.”
Retailers and consumer goods manufacturers around the world leverage Trax’s in-store execution and retail analytics solutions to better manage on-shelf availability and optimize merchandising. These solutions are powered by proprietary fine-grained image recognition algorithms which convert photos of retail shelves into granular, actionable shelf and store-level insights. Besides autonomous robots, Trax also offers fixed on-shelf and ceiling cameras, as well as mobile app solutions, to monitor real-time shelf conditions.
