Amazon's automated grocery store of the future opens Monday
Amazon's automated grocery store of the future opens
Monday
By Jeffrey Dastin January 21, 2018
Shoppers enter the Amazon Go store located in Amazon's
"Day 1" office building in Seattle, Washington, U.S., January 18,
2018. Photo taken January 18, 2018.
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc will open its
checkout-free grocery store to the public on Monday after more than a year of
testing, the company said, moving forward on an experiment that could
dramatically alter brick-and-mortar retail.
The Seattle store, known as Amazon Go, relies on cameras
and sensors to track what shoppers remove from the shelves, and what they put
back. Cash registers and checkout lines become superfluous - customers are
billed after leaving the store using credit cards on file.
For grocers, the store's opening heralds another
potential disruption at the hands of the world's largest online retailer, which
bought high-end supermarket chain Whole Foods Market last year for $13.7
billion. Long lines can deter shoppers, so a company that figures out how to
eradicate wait times will have an advantage.
Amazon did not discuss if or when it will add more Go
locations, and reiterated it has no plans to add the technology to the larger
and more complex Whole Foods stores.
The convenience-style store opened to Amazon employees on
Dec. 5, 2016 in a test phase. At the time, Amazon said it expected members of
the public could begin using the store in early 2017.
But there have been challenges, according to a person
familiar with the matter. These included correctly identifying shoppers with
similar body types, the person said. When children were brought into the store
during the trial, they caused havoc by moving items to incorrect places, the
person added.
Gianna Puerini, vice president of Amazon Go, said in an
interview that the store worked very well throughout the test phase, thanks to
four years of prior legwork.
"This technology didn't exist," Puerini said,
walking through the Seattle store. "It was really advancing the state of
the art of computer vision and machine learning."
"If you look at these products, you can see they're
super similar," she said of two near-identical Starbucks drinks next to
each other on a shelf. One had light cream and the other had regular, and
Amazon's technology learned to tell them apart.
HOW IT WORKS
The 1800-square-foot (167-square-meter) store is located
in an Amazon office building. To start shopping, customers must scan an Amazon
Go smartphone app and pass through a gated turnstile.
Ready-to-eat lunch items greet shoppers when they enter.
Deeper into the store, shoppers can find a small selection of grocery items,
including meats and meal kits. An Amazon employee checks IDs in the store's
wine and beer section.
Sleek black cameras monitoring from above and weight
sensors in the shelves help Amazon determine exactly what people take.
If someone passes back through the gates with an item,
his or her associated account is charged. If a shopper puts an item back on the
shelf, Amazon removes it from his or her virtual cart.
Much of the store will feel familiar to shoppers, aside
from the check-out process. Amazon, famous for dynamic pricing online, has
printed price tags just as traditional brick-and-mortar stores do.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Seattle; Editing by
Jonathan Weber and Rosalba O'Brien)
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