About
The Problem
At SITUS we believe retail is ripe for disruption. Technology has been progressing significantly yet processes in retail haven't changed in decades. Stock management keeps retail running, but it's repetitive, physical, complex and expensive.
The Solution(s)
Our mission is to simplify the entire process, from the moment a product arrives to when it leaves with a customer. The process from inbound to outbound involves many steps, we are simplifying and therefore decreasing the labour cost at each step using robotics. Our approach is to tackle the entire process one step at a time, beginning with solutions that are the simplest to develop and deliver the largest benefit. Based on conversations with retail owners/operators, the first steps we're focusing on are shelf stocking and product scanning.
Scanner - Robot for monitoring stock levels, validated by finetuning a vision model. Already deployed by some competitors.
Stocker - Robot for stocking shelves, proof of concept in simulation
Why Now
Until recently, these retail operations were impossible to automate with robotics, which were limited to controlled environments. However, Vision Language Models (VLMs) have broken that barrier, enabling robots to reason and operate in cluttered, never-before-seen retail environments.