These days most of us are all to familiar with autonomous robots. Whether it’s the helpful little vacuum cleaner scurrying underfoot or the creepy robotic towers wandering and beeping around the supermarket doing what nobody seems to know, robots are popping up everywhere. Now the AROUND B robot is coming to bookstores to make book browsing uncomfortable.
When a customer enters a bookstore and begins browsing, AROUND B will guide them and carry their book selections to a seating area, where they can go through their books. When the customer is done browsing and is certain they want to purchase a book, they can simply place the book into AROUND B’s storage unit, and the mini robot will carry the book to the cashier. On the other hand, the books that didn’t make the cut and are left behind, AROUND B picks them up and takes them to a common section, wherein the employees can easily gather the books and put them back in their respective section.
I’m no Luddite, but it seems like yet another way to eliminate employees and cut jobs.
Noooooo!