MOSCOW, RUSSIA – While some have mastered moving discretely through stores in order to avoid talkative sales associates, and others skip stores altogether thanks to the rise of online delivery, Russian supermarket chain Lenta has shoppers traveling from near and far to meet its new chatty employees. A world’s first: Lenta unveiled seven new retail Promobots capable of conversing with customers about discounts and promotions, and performing in-store demonstrations of new products.

“Each of the seven supermarkets introduced one robot as a consultant. We actively study the market and international experience,” said Oleg Kivokurtsev, Promobot’s Director of Development, according to Technocracy. “Now, we can confidently say that this is the largest implementation of autonomous service robots in retail, at the moment. There were no similar cases in Asia, nor in Euorpe or the U.S. We create robots to improve people’s lives.”

With groundbreaking facial recognition software allowing them to recognize regular customers, the bots can walk autonomously through the aisles, helping where needed, and have been met with approval by current customers, according to Mirror.

While other retailers have begun to turn to in-store artificial help–like Giant Foods’ roving robot Marty and Walmart’s shelf-scanning robots–Lenta’s Promobots are the first implemented that can interact with shoppers.

With more retailers probing into the realm of robot employees, will robots became a permanent fixture in brick-and-mortar grocery? AndNowUKnow will continue to bring you the latest technological advances in our industry.

Lenta