Automated music store a first

Press, 6 December 1989, Page 57

Automated music store a first

NZPA-AP Minneapolis Customers at a new music store in Minneapolis get a clerk that is a model of efficiency, but they do not get a smile or a chance to chat about the weather. It is not that the clerk has an unpleasant personality, it has no personality at all. The clerk is a robot. The Robot Music Store, the promoters say, is the first completely automated retail store in the world. , The robot system lets customers listen to selections, place an order and pay by cash or major credit cards, while it delivers compact discs, returns

change and receipts, restocks shelves and places its own inventory orders. “Anyone who can operate a CD machine can operate this,” said Mr Dave Carroll, who, with Mr Bob Cahlander, founded Robot Manufacturing Centre, Inc., more than three years ago in Red Wing, 65km south-east of Minneapolis. . The “store” is something like a giant vending machine in the open court shopping area of a large office building. CDs are stacked on shelves on the inside walls of a transparent enclosure covering 13 square metres and standing about 2.75 metres high.

On the outside are four earphone sets, video display screen and fixtures to take in the money or credit cards and deliver CDs and change. In the centre of it all is a robot arm that can rotate 360 deg. around the enclosure to grab a customer’s selection and deliver jt. Messrs Carroll and Cahlander said they will test the idea in Minneapolis to see if it is profitable and whether customers will like buying from a machine instead of a human. They say the system can be bought for less than SUSIOO,OOO ($172,414). Initial reaction was mixed.

Heather Jenkel, waiting to get i a closer look at the robot before ' K buying, said she liked the idea of ! being able to listen to the music before she bought something, but preferred to deal with a person. “I like someone to be able to i talk to me and tell me ‘Ya, I heard this and I think it’s great’,” Ms Jenkel said. The first run of the revolutioni ary technology did not go off without a hitch. I The robot arm was shut down ! for a five-minute repair after it had trouble dispensing a new ; classical CD, Mr Cahlander said. i The arm will have to be retooled ,to pick up CDs of different Sizes, he said. •