What's happening?
This week the first Amazon Go store opens in Seattle ( see where ) : it russian mobile list looks like a normal grocery store, but it is the cutting-edge commercial technology that currently makes it the most advanced store in the world. There are no cashiers and you pay for your shopping directly through your Amazon account , without having to reach for your wallet (how obsolete!) or your smartphone.
This new cashierless shopping experience proposed by Amazon is made possible thanks to many of the technologies already found on board self-driving cars: artificial vision, sensors and machine learning that learns from experience. Out Shopping , which is able to detect when products are taken or put back on the shelves (note, not scanned, simply taken!), keeping track of them in the customer's virtual cart. Once finished shopping, you simply leave the store and, after a while, the bill will be charged to your Amazon account, which will send you a receipt. The end.
The opening was scheduled for early 2017, but last March the company suspended it. According to what the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, the store's computer "brain" was having trouble keeping track of more than 20 people at a time. So now there are hundreds of micro cameras scattered throughout the store: to understand which products are being purchased, Amazon uses video cameras with computer vision systems, machine learning and various sensors scattered throughout the store.