走进Decathlon Sporting Goods在旧金山的门店，可以发现一个机器人店员，名叫Tally。不仅可以盘点货物，实时更新产品库存；读取RFID标签，获取商品价格；还可以通过AI图像识别技术来区分产品。

Tally是旧金山当地一家机器人制造公司Simbe Robotics研发的。Simbe Robotics还在近日宣布完成了2,600万美元A轮融资，由Venrock领投，还有Future Shape，Valo Ventures和Activant Capital等参与。

此外，Simbe还与 Softbank Robotics America软银机器人达成的库存融资协议，帮助Simbe在未来两年内为将其生产规模扩大到1,000个机器人。

在Simbe总部的“指挥中心”，可以更直接的感受Tally处理系统的强大功能。在计算机显示器上，可以看到机器人移动时捕获的实时图像，库存警报和最新数据分析。对零售品牌的管理者或工作人员来说，优化了库存管理、为工作提供了更多便利。

Tally的成功研发也改善了消费者体验：比如可以通过手机上的应用程序链接Tally，及时获取商品缺货信息。除了Decathlon Sporting Goods外，还有Schnuck Markets，Giant Eagle，Groupe Casino等大型连锁品牌使用了这个零售机器人。

Walk into the Decathlon sporting goods store on Market Street in San Francisco and you will find yourself face to face with Tally.

She is extremely intelligent and highly efficient: as she moves up and down the aisles, she takes a real-time inventory of the products on the shelves and racks, checking which products are running low or out of stock, and whether they are labeled with the correct price. She can read RFID tags, but she can also use AI-powered image recognition to distinguish different products at a glance.

Tally is the child of San Francisco-based Simbe Robotics.

It should be no surprise then that Simbe Robotics has just announced a $26 million Series A funding round, led by Venrock with participation from Future Shape, Valo Ventures, and Activant Capital.

At the same time, Softbank Robotics America and Simbe announced they are expanding their existing collaboration to encompass inventory financing, a move that will help Simbe scale its production to an additional 1,000 robots over the next two years. Nor should it surprise you that Tally was also featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

The “command center” at Simbe’s headquarters in South San Francisco provides an impressive glimpse of the power of this system. On a computer monitor you can see the live images captured by the robots as they move up and down the aisles, as well as the current alerts and latest analytics—a powerful set of new tools and insights for store managers and retail chain executives. Store employees can access some of the analytics on their handheld devices.

While Tally’s role might seem unobtrusive, the potential benefits from her insights are substantial. As mentioned above, better inventory management is worth hundreds of billions of dollars to the retail industry.

It will also improve the consumer experience: you will be less likely to find that the item you are looking for is out of stock; and Tally’s information can be synced to the store’s app on your smartphone, making it easier to find what you’re looking for—some retailers have already started doing so.

Tally and her siblings have already been deployed by several major chains such as Schnuck Markets, Giant Eagle, Decathlon Sporting Goods, Groupe Casino; they operate around the world and have already traveled more than 25,000 miles in-store.