Amazon.com opened the country’s first ever cashless no-checkout convenience store this week in Seattle, Washingotn.
The store has been teased up for a while and apparently doesn’t track consumers once inside. How it works is: customers enter the store and scan a QR code using the Amazon Go app on their phone. Picking up an item adds it to their virtual shopping cart whether they toss the item in their basket or hold onto it in their hands. The stores have a system of cameras tracking customers’ every move and is aware of their intentions to purchase an item.
To avoid privacy concerns, the system does not use facial recognition technology and also Amazon has said it is not using tracking chips inside of products because of the concern such chips could be used to track store visitors after they leave the store.
Instead cameras continuously search for video cues and cameras at every angle have it all covered.
Inside.com‘s Jason Calacanis described it, “Basically: When you enter the store, you start up the Amazon Go app on your smartphone. The store then uses a lot of cameras and LIDAR sensors (lasers) to track everything you do once inside the store. As well, through “deep learning,” sensors are trained to detect very specific movements and variations in weight, so that you can grab a cupcake from a shelf, and the store knows exactly what you took, and whether or not you put it back a second later.”
Read about what happened when CNBC took a yogurt and wasn’t charged for it, proving that the system is not fail safe, yet.
