For Walmart, Replacing Humans With Robots Is a Multibillion-Dollar Struggle

Machines programmed to sort merchandise in warehouses hit kinks with cardboard boxes and turkeys; automation push reaches ‘peak complexity’An automated system for sorting merchandise at a Walmart warehouse in Seymour, Ind. Walmart (WMT) has relied for years on more than 140,000 warehouse workers to unload trucks, forklift pallets of merchandise into warehouses, sort and store the goods on towering racks, then reverse the entire flow to send them out to stores and homes. It isn’t an easy job. A worker might walk 20,000 steps a shift. It also isn’t all that complicated—unless you try to program robots to do it....