Anyone who’s visited a Currys recently – or perhaps a Decathlon in Spain or even a Lowe’s store in the San Francisco Bay Area – may already have encountered a retail robot.

These few examples mark the start of something huge on the high street if a forecast by tech analyst ABI Research is to be believed. Last year it predicted that the annual revenue of the emerging sector providing retail robotics could exceed $8.4bn (£6.9bn) by 2030, so perhaps we’d better get used to the idea of seeing more silicon-based shop staff.

Robotics, and automation more generally, represent an opportunity for retailers as they wrestle with the constant challenge of managing the omnichannel experiences they offer while their costs rise and shoppers’ habits change. This technology was first used by the retail industry in back-office functions such as warehousing, but it has been adopted more recently for last-mile fulfilment – Co-op’s use of home delivery robots from Starship Technologies, for instance – and assistance on the shopfloor.