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Dive Brief:
Seven-Eleven Japan, the Japanese arm of 7-Eleven parent Seven & i Holdings, is working with robotics company Telexistence to develop a humanoid robot to work in its c-stores, according to a Tuesday announcement.
The robots, called “Astra,” will employ generative AI using a vision-language-action foundation model, the announcement said. The companies expect to have the robots in stores sometime in 2029.
The goal of this initiative is to boost efficiency and “transform the very role of employees in convenience stores,” according to the announcement.
Dive Insight:
With labor a continuing pressure on the c-store industry, Astra’s ability to take over rote tasks can help Seven-Eleven Japan save money and alleviate pressure from workforce shortages.
“Robots will take on routine in-store operations, allowing employees to focus on services that only humans can deliver — strengthening store appeal and creating new value for customers,” Telexistence said in the announcement.
The partnership has three goals: identify the best tasks to automate and verify the effectiveness of robots in them, develop humanoid robots that are prepared for real-world in-store challenges and build a large-scale robot operation dataset to improve AI training.
The initiative is expected to “accelerate dataset development and practical implementation of AI-powered robots,” according to the announcement.
Telexistence already has some experience with Seven-Eleven Japan, which is also piloting Ghost, Telexistence’s beverage restocking robot, in select stores in Tokyo, according to a separate announcement this week.
The scale of Seven-Eleven Japan’s operations — it has around 20,000 stores in the country — will provide a plethora of training data.
“This will enable end-to-end integration of perception, planning, and control — bringing humanoid robots into practical use faster and at greater scale than any competitor,” the announcement said.
AloJapan.com