Retail robots: what stores use and the cost

Stores use robots for four jobs today: scanning shelves, cleaning floors, filling prescriptions and greeting shoppers. The first three are common in large chains, and greeting is still rare. Public prices run from $99 a month for a talking kiosk to $95,880 for a large floor scrubber, and Starlife Bella costs $10 to $20 an hour as a greeter.

Why stores look at robots

Most stores that look at robots are short of staff. In a Logile survey of 500 US store associates in March 2025, 51% said their store is short-staffed during busy periods most of the time, and 77% said it regularly loses sales because of poor scheduling or staffing decisions. Turnover makes this harder to fix. In Retail TouchPoints' store operations survey, published in November 2024, 46% of retailers said their store staff turnover was between 21% and 50%.

A retail staffing agency fills the gap with people. A robot takes one narrow task off the people you already have, so it helps to be exact about which task.

The four jobs robots do in stores

Shelf scanning and inventory

A shelf-scanning robot drives the aisles and photographs the shelves, so staff learn what is out of stock, misplaced or priced wrongly. Shoppers see it, but it does not serve them.

Simbe's Tally is the best-known example. Simbe announced in September 2026 that it has more than 3,000 units under contract across more than 75 retail banners, as The Shelby Report reported, and BJ's Wholesale Club is one named customer. Marty, made by Badger Technologies, looks for spills at Stop & Shop, and in September 2023 it was upgraded at more than 300 stores to check stock and prices as well.

Some programs have stopped, though. Walmart ended its contract with Bossa Nova in November 2020 after using its shelf-scanning robots in about 500 stores, the Associated Press reported.

Floor cleaning

Cleaning robots are scrubbers and vacuums that drive themselves around the store. Sam's Club has had almost 600 autonomous scrubbers, built by Tennant and running Brain Corp software, and in January 2022 it began adding scanning towers so the same machines check inventory while they clean.

Pharmacy dispensing

Shoppers never see this work. Walgreens fills prescriptions with robots in central micro-fulfillment centers and ships them to its stores. In May 2025 it had 12 such centers, which supported more than 5,000 stores and filled more than 3.5 million prescriptions a week, according to Retail TouchPoints.

Greeting and helping shoppers

This is the job a door greeter does, which is to say hello, answer "where do I find it" and walk the shopper to the aisle. It is the least common of the four, and the examples so far are tests.

Since April 2026 a hardware store in Pocking, Germany, has tested a humanoid robot called Schotti that tells shoppers where products are and walks them to the right aisle. Reuters reported that it appears two to three times a week and that much of its movement is remote-controlled.

A retail store kiosk is the fixed version of this job. Stella is a talking kiosk that works as a greeter or sales rep and stays in one place. Robots that drive themselves, such as the OrionStar GreetingBot Mini, greet people and lead them to a target position.

The four jobs side by side

What does a retail robot cost?

Shelf-scanning robots are sold to chains by contract, and we found no public price for Tally or Marty. The same is true of the pharmacy systems.

Cleaning robots do have public prices. The US reseller RobotLAB lists them from $13,000 for a LionsBot R3 Vac to $95,880 for a Gausium Scrubber 75P, or from $369 to $2,669 a month on a 36-month plan. The Pudu CC1 is listed from $22,000.

For greeting, the Stella kiosk costs $99 a month, although the order button read "Out of Stock" when we checked. OrionStar publishes no price for the GreetingBot Mini. Bella costs $10 to $20 an hour, and you pay only for the hours you book.

Prices checked in November 2026. They change often; check the linked pages.

Where Starlife Bella fits

Starlife Bella does the fourth job. It is a humanoid service robot with a friendly face and a chest display, on a wheeled base. As a store greeter it greets shoppers at the door, answers their questions and leads them to the product or the department. It speaks more than 30 languages with live translation both ways.

Bella is not autonomous. A trained robot pilot controls it live from a laptop, with AI assistance, and Starlife supplies that person, which is why Bella can answer a question nobody wrote down in advance.

The results we can show come from a mall. In a 14-day pilot at American Dream, one robot had 2,222 guest engagements that lasted 53 seconds each on average, and it led 638 guests to one tenant. Guests Bella referred redeemed a coupon at 35.4%, against 8.0% for a human street team.

The price includes the robot pilot, the driving and the maintenance, with no big contract and nothing to buy. Bella has built-in 5G, so it does not need your Wi-Fi, and it runs a full 8-hour shift on one charge. It works indoors only and is available in the United States and Germany. The normal start is a 14-day pilot, with a lead time of about one week.

Where Starlife Bella does not fit

Bella does not scan shelves, count stock, restock, clean floors or run a checkout. It does not carry or hand over products. If your problem is empty shelves or wrong price tags, a shelf-scanning robot is the right tool, and if it is dirty floors, buy or lease a cleaning robot.

A kiosk is also the better choice if shoppers ask the same few questions and you only need a fixed point that answers them, because it costs far less each month.

Bella makes sense when nobody in your store has time to welcome shoppers and walk them to the product, and a demo is the way to see it do that. Book a demo.