Why does Marty the robot exist? - What the fuck does this piece of shit even do?

[mister meaner]

Marty the robot is a tall, autistic, grocery store robot currently being deployed to many Giant grocery stores in the US, because I assume the big autistic robot is cheaper than hiring someone who is legitimately disabled. But what the fuck does this piece of shit even do? I am not from the US so I might not ever meet one of these fucking things, but I am curious to know what they do. Anyway, here's what it looks like.

It's got a great big pair of googley eyes and looks like a futuristic dildo with down syndrome. I have been searching online and it seems to not have a use outside of yelling at wagies to pick shit up off the ground and making messes:

It's also great at helping customers locate items and dispensing advice:

But is that all it does? What the fuck is this thing? Have you met one? Do you like it?

 

[Fireman Sam]

Never thought I'd see a lolcow thread on a robot!
It's clearly a fucking grift, stores that have this piece of shit have spent a CONSIDERABLE sum on it. You answered your own question though. Its primary and only function is to glide slowly around the store and detect spillages, when it does it screams for someone to clean it up, it doesn't offer any other use. Not even a fucking soap dispenser.
And the funniest part is that it probably causes more problems than it solves them, I can't see anyone who has to work at the behest of these things willingly doing so or enjoying its company.
And its ability to pick up voices and give answers, the moment the store layout changes someone is going to have to reconfigure all of that shit. Are people seriously so unused to speaking to a normal fucking human being that they have to resort to the fucking dildo bot?

A fucking literal downs syndrome kid could do this job with more efficiency and probably cost a lot less, this is just the product of some silicone valley faggot, a seemingly successful faggot though.
and...
GOD DAMN I WANT TO TIP IT OVER AND STOMP ON ITS STUPID FUCKING ROBOT FACE AND GOUGE OUT ITS FUCKING GOOGLY EYES AND KICK IT IN THE MECHANICAL BALLS AND ASK "WHERE CAN I FIND YOUR MANAGER BITCH" AND WATCH IT WRITHE ABOUT TRYING TO MOVE OR RIGHT ITSELF AND CONSTANTLY SCREAMING "H E L P, M A R T Y H A S F A L L E N O V E R AS I KNOCK A BUNCH OF JARS OF ASSORTED PRESERVES AND SOME PICKLED ONIONS FOR GOOD MEASURE ALL OVER THE GOD DAMN MACHINE AND MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A FUCKING ACCIDENT, LIKE IT KNOCKED INTO AN ISLE AND PISSED ITSELF, FORCING THE FAT WAGIE TO CLEAN IT UP.
FUCK MARTY, STUPID FUCKING DILDO LOOKING CUNT!

 

[Chocolate Wombat]

It exists because you touch yourself at night.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

You wanted 12$ wages, folks.

This is the company's retaliation.

 

[Dysnomia]

The one at my local Giant has a female voice. They even put a mask on it.

I swear to God that thing is stalking me. Everywhere I go in the store it's suddenly there. It also has a tendency to malfunction and start alerting to invisible hazards. I had to get an employee once because it kept moving back and forth on a narrow isle saying "hazard detected!" and it was hard to get your cart through without bumping it.

I didn't know you could ask it questions about where to find products. Most people ignore it and I've only heard it speak when there's a mess on the floor or it is malfunctioning. I saw a kid take its picture. She talked to it but it didn't respond. I think it's also an older model than the ones in the pictures.

Personally I think it's useless and gets in the way. But stores these days tend to have fewer employees and trying to find a floor walker can be hard. My Giant has converted most of the checkouts into self service lanes. I guess 35k for a robot who can tell you where to find the canned peas is cheaper over time than playing some wage slaves to do it.

The last time I saw any real employee action was last month when a bottle of juice broke and some guy sperged for a dustpan for the glass. It did take awhile to get the dustpan actually. Two other employees came over and neither brought the dustpan or seemed to understand the concept that broken glass was dangerous. The employee was pretty whiny. But maybe he was tired of dealing with idiots.

These stores seem to hire anyone who can prove they have a pulse. That robot is probably smarter than most of them. Maybe if they gave it arms it could be more useful. Or start killing us.

 

[Mr. Bung]

Never seen one. But I assume it would be fun to tip one over and laugh.

It's 2021, and all our robots are either lame or still in the prototype stage and we probably won't be seeing those on the street for another 50 years. Shit moves so slowly. It really does feel like a "born too late to explore the world, born too early to explore the stars" kind of era.

 

[L50LasPak]

My area isn't exactly high crime, but these things would be vandalized in literally minutes if they were deployed here. I have no idea how they stay functional without kids trying to pull them apart for souviners or teenagers knocking it over for the hell of it. The old fuckers would try to get it to run over their feet so they could sue, and irate customers would immediately start pushing it out of the way or otherwise trying to disable it if it blocked items they want to get to.

This would all happen within the first hour. I don't think it would survive the afternoon.

 

[Internet Explorer]

Because coke addled mid-level execs attend the shittiest focus groups and think, "whoa we need to greenlight that shit! "

 

[Stoneheart]

It's 2021, and all our robots are either lame or still in the prototype stage and we probably won't be seeing those on the street for another 50 years.

Well there are some usefull ones...

 

[Sperghetti]

I have a friend who works at a Giant store and was around when they unveiled these idiotic things. Publicly, what they do is detect floor debris (poorly) and trigger a “clean up in dairy” message to be broadcast over the PA system in a human-sounding female voice that, if you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t suspect came from the robot. I say “poorly” because her store’s Marty apparently kept detecting a bit of chipped linoleum in the bakery department as a hazard until they re-calibrated it. Marty does not clean up messes, which is something even a Roomba can do. I used to joke to her that science has come so far that we have created a robot that exists solely to nag people.

When they first announced the robots, I asked her how they were expecting them to not constantly be tipped over and vandalized. She claims that Marty is actually a wandering surveillance camera, and there is a bit of an urban legend among the employees that he can phone the cops if you accost him. In fact, she swears Marty’s real purpose is actually lawsuit avoidance. She claims to have heard that more than one store in our area has managed to avoid a lawsuit in the first year these things were rolled out due to the camera footage from Marty proving the fact that the plaintiff did not, in fact, slip on anything and hurt themselves.

Anyway, when you’re shopping at Giant, remember that Big Marty is watching you, so be sure to give him the stink eye when you walk past. I always do.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Is he 3 Laws compliant? We must find out.

 

[DumbDude42]

to me this seems like some corporate boomers got scammed into spending lots of money on worthless gimmick shit by some sleazy tech startup conmen

 

[Mr. Bung]

Well there are some usefull ones...

True, Roombas can be pretty useful. PROTIP: Before running it make damn well sure there isn't any dog or cat poop laying around. Or else you'll be in for a bad time...

Spoiler: Gross

 

[Toolbox]

The same reason "sophia the robot" became a big hit despite being an overglorified chatbot from a guy that attempted to make a literal rainforest in his dorm room in college and killed most of the animals. Robots = cool automatically in a lot of people's heads because of years of media pushing that message. Any shitty startup can then produce whatever shit they want and people will eat it up even if it's absolutely nonfunctional. Look at kickstarter. There's hundreds of different garbagebots, mostly "home assistants" that were promoted as being life changing and just end up being a pet rock.

 

[totallyrandomusername]

They seriously couldn't give it Roomba/Scooba functions so it can actually clean up the messes itself? Damn, that's stupid.

True, Roombas can be pretty useful. PROTIP: Before running it make damn well sure there isn't any dog or cat poop laying around. Or else you'll be in for a bad time...
View attachment 2514710View attachment 2514711

So, what they need to do is incorporate a shit sensor, so ones its shitty it just stops what it's doing and asks for help.

"Shit Encountered. Cleaning Halted." and you get a nice little text on your phone "Please de-shit the Roomba to resume cleaning"

 

[Toolbox]

They seriously couldn't give it Roomba/Scooba functions so it can actually clean up the messes itself? Damn, that's stupid.


So, what they need to do is incorporate a shit sensor, so ones its shitty it just stops what it's doing and asks for help.

There's some now that just have a camera that allows the unit to entirely avoid any objects that it couldn't clean. But these aren't sold by Irobot who actually made the roomba, they're from random chinese companies most of the time who are sadly beating out most of the western brands in performance and price. Irobot just has a bot that can navigate a house and not even well. The better US brand in Neato who uses LIDAR sensing rather than cameras, but still they're falling behind the times.