A supermarket robot escaped from its store recently in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, and was spotted in the parking lot.
The robot, whose name is Marty, is a fixture inside Giant Food where it identifies spills and other hazards during store hours, Fox 5 reported Friday.
Video footage shows the tall grey robot slowly rolling through the parking lot:
However, it was not long before Marty’s lucky break ended thanks to someone who grabbed the robot and guided it back inside the building.
Giant Food Stores announced in January 2019 it was adding robotic assistants to all of its 172 stores.
“‘Marty,’ a tall gray robot with googly eyes, will soon be working alongside associates, thanks to a partnership between Ahold Delhaize USA services company Retail Business Services, GIANT, and Jabil subsidiary Badger Technologies™,” the news release said.
Additional video footage shows one of the robots patrolling the aisles of the grocery store while shoppers fill their carts:
This was apparently the first time one of the robots tried to escape its workplace, and a spokesperson for the business told Fox 5, “Marty was just getting a little fresh air.”
The Giant Food Store news release continued:
The in-store robots, which move around the store unassisted, are being used to identify hazards, such as liquid, powder and bulk food-items spills and provide reporting that enables quick corrective action. The robots’ efforts free up associates to spend more time serving with customers. They also help stores mitigate risk caused by such spills.
Breitbart News reported in 2020 the Chinese coronavirus pandemic “could potentially see jobs for humans permanently replaced with machines,” per a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
The jobs at risk were identified as retail salespeople, parking attendants, slaughterhouse workers, and toll collectors.
The study claimed the pandemic could see many jobs people had performed “taken over by robots and machines,” the outlet reported.