Robot fired from supermarket for scaring customers
Fabio was tasked to engage the human shoppers by greeting and helping them at the store
(Web Desk) – A supermarket had to do away with one of its robot employee and fire it because it was observed to scare human customers.
Fabio was part of a test experiment carried out by a TV programme. The job description was to meet, greet, joke and help shoppers. Fabio was enabled to locate items for the customers in the store vicinity, reported mirror.co.uk.
It could only last for a week in the Margiotta store. The store management and those running the store quickly realized that Fabio cannot replace humans.
Fabio was made by researchers at Heriot-Watt University, naming it called "ShopBot"
The helper robot could not answer the questions of customers properly and they were often frustrated with the performance. When told to give free samples to the shoppers, Fabio could only manage to give two items away as people were reluctant to trust the machine.
“Unfortunately Fabio didn’t perform as well as we had hoped,” Elena Margiotta, the store manager told adding, “People look to be actually avoiding him.”
Fabio couldn’t answer questions like where is cheese. “cheese is in the fridges,” the robot would respond.
It was let go eventually. Hearing the news, Robot asked, "Are you angry?"
