American retail giant Walmart plans to invest USD200 million on autonomous forklifts, according to an exclusive Reuters report, citing three unnamed people familiar with the matter.
In April, Walmart announced a rollout of 19 autonomous forklifts at four of its distribution centres after a 16 month trial of FoxBot autonomous forklifts.
The Reuters report says the massive investment in autonomous forklifts would occur in stages over several years.
Camille Dunn, a Walmart spokesperson, declined to comment to Reuters and referred the news agency to Walmart’s April announcement about FoxBots.
"We evaluate the performance at each phase to determine if the technology meets our ability to better serve customers," she says in an email. "Some initiatives we scale, some initiatives we don't."