"imagine stepping foot inside a store and having 20 robotic shelves come racing to you, begging you to buy a given item lest they find themselves in the scrap heap when they don’t hit a monthly sales target."

This would be a great scene in a movie set in the not too distant future. A robotic scrum, maybe they're all playing jingles, an older robot may bump into the protagonist...

I'm reality, I expect there are diminishing returns on this kind of thing and it will be managed by the store owner so you seldom have more than one robotic shelf following you around. A variant on it might be picking the shelf you want to come to you or shelves coming up to you based on your shopping profile. Maybe the convenience store of the future could be a hybrid restaurant or cafe. I sit down with a drink or snack and shelves come by my table so I can simultaneously do my shopping.

Almost as dumb as the LCD panels they put over the freezer aisle doors that track your eye movement response to what they show on the panels.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90302382/its-not-just-google-or-...

Why do we invent things to make our lives worse?

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #202: The justification for profit is profit.

With further progress, in the future on Mars there will be robots who serve your drink of choice.

A more literal Mars bar robot.

If I am accosted by one of these things I see myself accidently knocking product onto the floor next to it, which will no doubt draw the attention of the other robots running around broadcasting finds of stuff on the floor. Others will be picked and put on inappropriate shelves, and subsequently need to be gathered up by staff.

Probably they will develop arms to gather in drop accidents, providing opportunities to slip in ringers.

The amusements multiply.

Dumb