Walmart's getting robot janitors

Walmart will begin cleaning some of its stores with robot janitors beginning in January, the company announced Monday.

The robots in question "look like a cross between a miniature Zamboni and a motorized wheel chair," Bloomberg reports, and their main function is to sweep and mop store floors. They must be guided by humans while they learn the contours of the space they'll clean but after that can operate autonomously, even while customers are around.

Walmart has ordered 360 of the machines, which are made by a company called Brain Corp. The automated janitors are already at work in airports in Boston, Miami, San Diego, and Seattle, and Brain CEO Eugene Izhikevich sees big box stores as a major new market for his product.

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Walmart described the robots as a tool to help "our associates complete repetitive tasks so they can focus on other tasks within role and spend more time serving customers."