Cool. I've seen Kiva before, and seeing another video of them is what sparked the idea. I was wondering if anything has come up on the other end.
Yeah, there are a lot of challenges. Especially since, as was pointed out, the different "terrains" change. I'd imagine something with and RFID tag and a way to "see" shelf space, fix up items that are askew, check for mis-placed items, etc. There's a lot going on there.
As far as being economical, I guess it would come down to the time it took to customize each product. If it's an hour with an engineer to get the store setup and then 10 minutes of time with each new product, maybe it could become economical. But yeah, there are a lot of challenges there.
I wonder how much it costs a typical walmart to do restocking per year; if you could figure that out, youd have an idea if it's economically viable or not I think.