In August, a robot vaguely resembling a kangaroo will begin stacking sandwiches, drinks and ready meals on shelves at a Japanese convenience store in a test its maker, Telexistence, hopes will help trigger a wave of retail automation. Following that trial, store operator FamilyMart says it plans to use robot workers at 20 stores around Tokyo by 2022. At first, people will operate them remotely -- until the machines' artificial intelligence (AI) can learn to mimic human movements. Rival convenience store chain Lawson is deploying its first robot in September, according to Telexistence. "It advances the scope and scale of human existence," the robot maker's chief executive, Jin Tomioka, said as he explained how its technology lets people sense and experience places other than where they are.

While it might be tempting to dismiss Microsoft's AI technology hype as slick marketing to drum up sales revenue, a number of the company's customers said artificial intelligence is moving deeper into the real world. Several Microsoft blue-chip customers displayed their experiences with the company's customer experience AI technology here at the Microsoft Ignite 2018 conference. BMW uses AI and Azure's bot framework to enhance on-road driver support in cars. Swedish clothing retailer H&M launched Afound, an off-price outlet that includes physical stores in Sweden and globally via a digital marketplace infused with customer experience AI to drive sales. Two other retail giants, Nordstrom and Walmart, are remaking their online shopping experiences to match their online-only competitors.

Really good science fiction movies help us imagine a more exciting future, where giant robots engage in combat for our viewing pleasure or there's a cure for baldness. These films also remind us just how far those fantastic visions are from our more mundane reality. By now we should all own flying cars and be able to control machines with our minds. At the very least, we hoped by now to have artificially intelligent robots catering to our every whim. It turns out we're not far off from that particular future, at least when it comes to buying stuff.

Earlier this year, autonomous retail store Amazon Go opened to much fanfare, which just goes to show you how much we love buying isht. Every organization on the planet--even the 24-hour Elon Musk show known as Futurism--covered the event as if it were a visit by the pope. Headlines declared that the store of the future is here--and then promptly chased after the next squirrel. We've been watching the evolution of retail automation for a while now, so as the store went live in Seattle, we wrote about 11 Examples of Grocery Store Technology that will enable the grocery stores of the future. While Amazon Go is probably the most advanced convenience store on the planet, it's far from being the only one ushering in the era of retail automation – where self-checkout is replaced by no checkout at all.

RapidMathematix is a Silicon Valley based company with capabilities in retail pricing, artificial intelligence and deep learning. RapidMathematix provides a mathematical platform to process data generated via IoT devices. Utilizing deep learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, we compute merchandizing actions for real time execution in a retail environment.