Over the past few years, computer vision applications have become ubiquitous. From phones that recognize the faces of their users, to cars that drive themselves, to satellites that track ship movements, the value of computer vision has never been clear. But hardware shortages and labor disruptions in the pandemic's wake are challenging companies' ability to make good on the promise of computer vision, even as the pandemic itself has accelerated the potential of its use cases. Following is a look at how companies across a range of industries are deploying computer vision to improve and optimize key business processes, from retail fulfillment to health-care diagnostics. Computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence that is focused on processing images and videos to extract meaningful information.

Consider the grocery clerks at two Safeway stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. A few weeks ago, over 200 workers who are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 (UFCW5) union picketed a Safeway store in San Jose, Calif. to voice concerns about a push by parent company Albertsons to add more A.I to its operations. Albertsons recently partnered with the startup Takeoff Technologies to create mini warehouses where computer vision technology automatically sorts items that shoppers order online. Using A.I. reduces the need for Safeway staff to manually locate and grab items for delivery--workers now just retrieve the finalized orders from a conveyor belt and sign off on them for eventual delivery. Several grocery store chains are investing heavily in micro-fulfillment centers after Amazon helped to popularize as-fast-as-you-can deliveries, said Andrew Lipsman, a principal analyst at research firm eMarketer.

Imagine if your neighborhood grocery or convenience store offered one-hour, on-demand fulfillment -- not through intermediaries like Postmates or Instacart, but entirely in-house -- and made a profit on every order. As fantastical as the idea might seem, that's the promise of CommonSense Robotics, an Israeli micro-fulfillment startup that today launched its first autonomous sorting and shipping center in downtown Tel Aviv. "We started CommonSense Robotics because as consumers we wondered: Why can't we get our online orders faster and cheaper than going to the store? We're excited to see this groundbreaking technology finally serving real customers to allow for fast, inexpensive deliveries of high-quality products," said Elram Goren, CEO and cofounder of CommonSense Robotics, adding, "It's a true win-win for both retailers and consumers." CommonSense's fulfillment center -- which it claims is the world's smallest -- measures just 6,000 square feet in total.