The Amazon Go Store
When you require anything, you probably need to walk into a store to buy it and get involved in long queues or with the cashier for small change. To introverts it can be very boring and/or irritating. But what if you had a choice to walk straight to the store, pick whatever you want and come back without any physical involvement?
I’m bringing you to Amazon Go, the only retail store powered by lots of sensors and cameras instead of human attendants and cashiers.
Let’s find out.
We are familiar with Amazon. If we want anything, we head directly to amazon.com, pick up whatever we want and check out with a credit card. People with prime members in metro cities can get their items delivered in 1-2 hours in 8 out of 10 times.
The Amazon marketplace has very high quality and wide range of products and is usually cheaper than other e-commerce or brick and mortar stores.
However, we aren’t familiar with the Amazon Retail Store. The first such store is currently situated in Seattle and more are opening soon.
To access the retail store, you need to install the Amazon Go App. A prime membership is not necessary. You need a credit card connected to your Amazon account and the strength to carry your shopping bags.
The first step in Amazon’s retail store to pull out your smartphone, open Amazon Go app, scan the barcode and get in. Don’t worry if you are out of power. You will find Amazon employees with power banks to juice up your phone.
The first impression is that nobody will ask you what you want or what you’re doing. This store has minimal human interactions. Apart from that, it looks like a regular store. You will see shelves with products like other stores.
However, the products are labeled differently. The wrappers are printed with UPC or camera recognition codes for the overhead cameras to detect the product and add it to your shopping cart.
Shelves are combined with pressure sensors, laser sensors, and weight sensors assisted with computer vision algorithms. When all these are working together, the store can understand what you pick up. Actually, Amazon was so specific about their technology so I don’t have the whole information, at least for now.
Amazon is very confident about their security. But human interaction begins when you have to return a product. To return a product, you have to just uncheck the item from your cart. You will get the refund only after you hand the item over to Amazon staff.
I found that Amazon Go’s tracking system is pretty accurate, thanks to computer vision algorithms and the combination of cameras, sensors and machine learning. Seeing all of them work together seamlessly gives confidence for future developments.
About the author:
I’m Biplab Das, a technical writer, tech YouTuber, blogger, ICT tutor and a part time website developer. People say smartphones are boring these days, but I think everyone is beginning to take this wonderful technology marvel for granted. Please don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel MoboMotion.
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