Morrisons has unveiled its newest staff members - in the form of aisle-roaming robots. The retail giant is trialling'Tally' robots at three stores in Wetherby, Redcar and Stockton, to monitor how products are being displayed on shelves. Using advanced AI and computer vision technology, Tally is designed to spot out-of-stock items, pricing errors, and misplaced products. Morrisons' technology manager, Katherine Allanach, called this a'crucial' role. 'It is a crucial but time-consuming task and so Tally aims to allow more time for colleagues to focus on customer service,' she told The Grocer.

"I think we are going to see an acceleration of the deployment of automation in the next three to five years. And so that's going to take a big bite out of those manual tasks. But I suspect in 10 years, there's still going to be a sizable portion of activities that are human led," says Mr Matthews.