Walmart battles online retail by adding more robots to its stores

Brick and mortar stores have been hit hard by online retailers like Amazon. Walmart (which has its own online presence) believes it has an answer to dwindling sales. Its solution, robots that take care of mundane jobs (like cleaning up spills) while its staff spends their time helping customers. The retailer announced today that it will deploy 1,500 new "Auto-C" autonomous floor cleaners, 300 "Auto-S" shelf scanners and an additional 1,200 "FAST" unloaders to scan and sort items as they come off delivery trucks. Plus to streamline online orders, it'll have 900 "Pickup Towers" so customers can order something on the company's site and just pick up it up from a vending machine at their nearest Walmart.