Tally: the shelf-scanning robot that first appeared in 2015 and passed 3,000 contracted units

A robot that reads shelves along the aisles, sold by subscription

Tally is a shelf-scanning robot made by Simbe Robotics. In November 2015 MIT Technology Review reported that Tally roams the aisles and automatically records which shelves need to be restocked. Four cameras scan shelves from the floor up to eight feet (about 2.4 m), and it navigates with a map of the store. It also checks whether products are misplaced and whether shelf prices are correct. One large retailer was testing it at the time. It was to be offered on a subscription basis, and the price was not given.

Three scans a day in a store that stays open

In June 2021 Simbe said Tally moves alongside shoppers and employees during normal store hours and scans an entire store up to three times a day. It had completed over 75,000 miles in stores. According to Retail Dive, Schnuck Markets and Giant Eagle had deployed Tally by 2020, and Tally 3.0 was due to replace the 2.0 devices operating since 2017. In November 2025 the company summarized its reach as nearly five dozen retailers in 10 countries. In January 2026 it unveiled Tally 4.0 with up to 12 hours of operation, and in September it announced more than 3,000 contracted units and more than 75 retail banners. These numbers are all company announcements.

Good in the survey, mixed in the aisles

In a Simbe survey of over 400 US shoppers, 77% viewed in-store robots positively and 4% negatively. The survey does not name who ran it. In July 2026, by contrast, Packaging Europe reported mixed responses on social media. Some posts said a robot blocked the aisle, and some said it was one more thing for staff to keep an eye on. Morrisons, the first UK retailer to trial the robots, later switched to AI shelf cameras. When a robot arrived at a Ralphs in Los Angeles in October 2026, UFCW Local 770 pushed back, saying members should not learn of workplace changes after the fact. B&R Stores’ director of marketing in Nebraska said the technology “eliminates repetitive manual audits so our teams can spend more time serving customers.”

A shelf scanner whose contracts grew for ten years

Tally is a case of a robot that circled stores in operation several times a day, not in demonstrations, and kept adding customers. In our Bossa Nova record, Walmart was reported to have ended its contract after concluding that employees could collect the same information. Tally is the same type of robot, yet chain-wide deployments continued. The sources we opened do not explain what separates the two. The unit and store counts are company statements, and we found no independent measurement of how much the robot reduced out-of-stock items.

When a robot moves between staff and shoppers, who should it help first?

What we haven’t confirmed

• How many units actually run and in how many stores (3,000 is contracted units, and about 1,000 stores is a 2024 secondary-source figure)
• Who ran the shopper survey and how
• Independent data on how much it reduced out-of-stock items and price errors
• The subscription price