Tesco is testing an autonomous robot that roams supermarket aisles looking for empty shelves, misplaced products and incorrect prices.

The grocery giant is trialling Simbe Robotics’ Tally robot in one of its stores, and has plans to extend the pilot to a small number of other locations.

Measuring roughly five feet tall, Tally uses artificial intelligence, cameras and computer vision to travel independently through the aisles and scan the items on shelves.

The technology checks stock availability, product positioning and shelf-edge pricing before sending the information back to store teams. This enables staff to respond quickly when a product needs replenishing or correcting.

Tesco said its robots would help identify gaps on shelves and give workers better information to improve product availability for shoppers.

The robot can complete several scans of a store per day, automating work that would ordinarily require staff to walk the aisles and manually inspect thousands of items.

Its manufacturer claims the robot can detect up to 10 times more out-of-stock products than manual shelf audits. Simbe said its technology had found more than 607 million instances of products being unavailable across its global deployments.

The robot is designed to move around shoppers and obstacles without disrupting the shopping experience, returning automatically to its charging station when required.

Tesco’s trial could prove particularly useful in larger supermarkets, where gaps can be difficult to spot quickly and missing items can lead to lost sales, even when replacement stock is available elsewhere in the building.

The supermarket has not indicated how long its initial trial will run or whether it could lead to a wider rollout across its estate.

The move comes after Morrisons began trialling Tally in three stores last year, using the robots to check its products were displayed correctly, accurately priced and legally compliant.

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