Walmart and Five Elements Robotics Working on Robotic Shopping Cart

It's been a few years since we first met Five Elements Robotics at RoboBusiness, where they introduced Budgee, a sort of robotic stuff-carrier that will follow you around with up to 22 kilograms of your junk by homing in on a small ultrasonic emitter. Last week at the Bloomberg Technology Conference, Five Elements CEO Wendy Roberts announced that Walmart is evaluating a prototype of a new Five Elements robotic shopping cart called Dash. Dash is much more than an upgraded version of Budgee; it's a completely new platform, specifically designed for autonomous shopping assistance. There are a lot of things I like about this idea. There's a clear value proposition to a robot that can carry groceries, guide shoppers directly to the items they want, and then handle paying for those items, since people hate doing all of those things.