It'll never completely happen, especially in the next 10 years. Automation has been a topic for decades and it still hasn't quite happened.
True. It's been tried since the earliest days of the auto industry, where it works the best, and even there it's failed to take over.
Walfart is doing what they call a test flight in certain markets, experimenting with robots on the sales floors, scanning outs, creating pick lits, etc. This will be as a good as the first one that has a circuit meltdown and when kids most assuredly will start beating and kicking the sh!t out of those fleets of R2-D2s
If you think about what automation has occurred and what industries it has occurred in stores really cant automate like other industries. Automation has only occurred successfully is assembly line or repeated task automation, where these machines only move in small areas. Yes, Deli/Bakery/Meat production could be taken to an outside facility and shipped to stores, but how can you automate stocking of aisles without a major disruption in layout or space?