Welcome back. Stadiums and arenas are looking to draw guests with dinosaurs in the parking lot and socially-distanced event space inside. Walmart has found ways to track inventory without roaming six-foot-tall robots. And a startup’s work developing a transparent mask is paying off. 

Sports venues are offering new visitor experiences as the coronavirus pandemic chokes revenue from ticket sales, Katie Deighton writes for The Experience Report.

Stadiums and arenas across the country have hosted events such as dinosaur safaris, Halloween drive-throughs and outdoor movies to claw back cash lost from spectator-free game days, offering up their large amounts of space to those looking for socially-distanced activities outside the home.

But stadium executives are clear these new experiences will not come close to covering the losses of 2020, no matter how successful they have been. The Rose Bowl, which is owned by the city of Pasadena, Calif., and operated as a nonprofit, will still lose around $13 million this year, despite inking cinema screening deals with the likes of Netflix and Hulu, according to its chief executive and general manager, Darryl Dunn.

“But this helps us keep jobs and it sends the right message to our community,” Mr. Dunn said. “We’re saying to the city: We’re still open—we’re just open a bit differently.”

Walmart ended its effort to use roving robots in store aisles to keep track of inventory, reversing a yearslong push to automate the task with the hulking, six-foot-tall machines after finding during the coronavirus pandemic that humans can help get similar results—without potentially provoking negative reactions in shoppers.

The goal was to reduce labor costs and increase sales by making sure products are kept in stock. But with more people shopping online during the pandemic, Walmart has more workers walking the aisles to collect orders, gleaning data on inventory in the process, Sarah Nassauer reports.

Walmart U.S. chief executive John Furner also has concerns about how shoppers react to seeing a robot working in a store, according to one person familiar with the situation.

Walmart continues to use other robots in stores, such as floor scrubbers that move through aisles alone.

Related: As robots become more common in public and work spaces, in roles from security guards to baristas, harm from humans is surprisingly common. Scientists are studying why. [WSJ] 

Masks have taken a lead role in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, but they have been limiting for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, who rely on lip reading and facial clues for communication.

Now a transparent mask that was under development even before the pandemic is a hot commodity.

Allysa Dittmar, who was born deaf, and her co-founders at ClearMask had aimed mostly to serve specialized populations in health care, Elizabeth Garone writes for the Journal.

Since April, however, the company has sold about 12 million transparent masks.

The success doesn’t owe entirely to circumstance.

“We spent enormous amounts of time listening to stakeholders, users and beneficiaries to make sure that we were building something that people really wanted,” Ms. Dittmar said.

Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Apple are trying to help their AR and VR efforts with Hollywood artists and tech first used to create digital effects for movies such as “Avatar.” [WSJ]

Airlines are trying new strategies to get people back in the air and comfortable with flying again: unlimited passes and giving seats away. [WSJ]

Clarins built a virtual boutique previewing new stores planned for next year, but shoppable now. [WWD]

A startup called Mmhmm is trying to make calls on Zoom and other video apps more entertaining. [Fast Company]

Companies are getting better at using AI to help online shoppers find what they are looking for—even when they don’t know what they want. [WSJ]

Opinion: Google’s new logos are too hard to tell apart. [TechCrunch]

Rant: Printers haven’t improved the consumer experience in decades. [Wired]