The trial is scheduled to continue for six months, ending in January 2027.

All five stores will use Armo for in-store promotions. At Welcia’s Koto Hirano location, the company will also continue testing the robot’s ability to photograph shelves and identify products that are out of stock.

The project is not simply testing whether robots can reduce employees’ workloads.

MUSE and Welcia want to determine whether Armo can operate simultaneously as a moving advertising channel and a source of structured retail data.

Each participating store will use a promotional unit equipped with digital signage.

The screen can display product information, campaigns and seasonal content while Armo travels autonomously through the shop.

Unlike a fixed display, the robot can move closer to particular product categories and position messages along customer routes.

MUSE therefore presents Armo as a new form of in-store retail media: one that can bring advertising to different locations rather than waiting for customers to pass a stationary screen.

The companies have not yet published performance figures showing whether this format increases product awareness or sales.

During the six-month test, they will need to determine which locations, times and forms of content generate a meaningful customer response—and whether any increase in sales justifies operating the robot.

At Welcia’s Koto Hirano store, Armo will also operate with a camera unit.

The robot will photograph shelves as it moves around the shop and help identify products that are missing.

Store employees traditionally perform these checks visually. Automating part of the process could reduce repetitive work and limit lost sales caused by products being available in storage but absent from the shelf.

MUSE plans to manage information about shelf images, stockouts, price displays and differences from planned product layouts through its Eureka Platform.

Capturing images, however, is only one part of the problem.

The system must recognise shelf conditions accurately and deliver information in a form that employees can act upon. An alert provides little value if it is unreliable, arrives too late or creates additional work for store staff.

MUSE and Welcia began testing Armo in October 2024.

An early trial at Welcia’s Minami Hashimoto store examined the robot’s use for transporting items. The companies later introduced promotional and stock-monitoring units at the Koto Hirano location.

Expanding the project to five stores represents a move from isolated testing towards evaluating the robot over a longer period and across different retail environments.

MUSE is also working with other Japanese retailers.

Supermarket operator Belc has expanded an Armo-powered promotional service called Robopro across 22 stores. Discount retailer MrMax has tested the technology for creating digital twins of product shelves.

Together, these projects reveal MUSE’s broader strategy.

The company does not want Armo to remain a standalone mobile robot. It is attempting to combine advertising, shelf monitoring and store-operation data within a common retail platform.

Three results will be particularly important.

First, whether mobile advertising produces better product awareness or sales than fixed digital signage.

Second, whether automated stockout detection materially reduces employee workloads and missed sales.

Third, whether those benefits justify the robot’s purchase, installation and operating costs.

MUSE’s announcement does not provide targets for sales increases, detection accuracy or employee time saved. Publishing those results after the trial would make it much easier to judge Armo’s commercial value.

There is also a small geographical inconsistency in the announcement. The project is described as covering five stores in Tokyo, but the published list reportedly includes Welcia’s Aeon Town Makuhari Nishi store in Chiba.

The central question remains whether Armo can become part of daily store operations—or whether it remains an impressive machine used primarily for temporary demonstrations.

SAKIME
East Asian startups, technology and international investment opportunities.
Web: sakime.jp
Author — Adrià Mas Rodríguez