How AI, Deep Learning & AR are changing retail sector

After revolutionizing the online shopping; getting the patent for package delivery by drones, the online retail giant Amazon is on the voyage of transforming brick and mortar food store. The store is called Amazon Go, wherein the shopper just need the Amazon Go App to scan the products they plan to buy, and straight away walk out without waiting in a checkout line. The shoppers pay via their mobile devices ― automatically ― as they leave.

The first prototype store opened in Seattle, Amazon’s headquarters and offers breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Currently, Amazon Go is available only to Amazon employees in beta, with the public launch date set for early 2017.

The store is powered by what Amazon has baptized as ‘Just Walk Out’ technology, which includes computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning. Developed over the past four years, it’s similar to the gear used in self-driving cars, according to Amazon. Amazon Go streamlines and shortens the whole consumer experience of grocery shopping and, just like Uber, removes the whole payment hassle. It uses sensors throughout the store and artificial intelligence to tell which direction customers are looking, even in a crowd, and can identify partially blocked labels.

Though, it is not for the first time that a retail tech company is tracking shoppers. Retailers are already able to track people’s movements and activities in the physical world like websites do on the Internet. There are retailers who use unique mobile Wi–Fi addresses to report how many people pass a store, how many actually visit it, how long they stay, and whether they return. Other companies deploy tools like video analytics and heat maps. But what make Amazon Go different from all others are link products to individuals and giving the customers a checkout-free shopping experience.

Related Read –
AI and Deep Learning: What is there for Geospatial Industry?
How AI is disrupting everything and where geospatial fits in?

The Go teaser looks pretty impressive. Given the contemporary state of AI, sensor and machine learning technologies, the Amazon Go seems feasible but exactly how the mechanism will work – not enough information from Amazon is there to connect the dots.

Linking the products to the person as they leave the store that too with 100% accuracy will definitely require out of the box thinking. If Amazon is anything short than that ― means someone essentially gets to steal from Amazon or Amazon mistakenly charges a customer for something he/she didn’t buy. Both scenarios are unacceptable. Also, grocery shoppers often put things back in the wrong aisle. Certain foods, like vegetables, are priced by weight. Families and other groups need to have one consolidated virtual cart, rather than being charged individually based on the smartphone in their pocket. How Amazon is going to address these issues is something to look out for. Nevertheless, Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence is going to change the whole retail shopping experience.

What’s the Update (as of 06-04-17)

Amazon is looking to bare the futuristic concept through its public Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS). The AWS service will let people search for colors, objects, and certain things in audio in real time. It may integrate with AWS’ existing Kinesis Streams service for building applications that sift through streaming data.

Selling electronics with augmented reality

The company is exploring the idea of creating stores to sell furniture and home appliances like refrigerators — the kinds of products that shoppers are reluctant to buy over the internet sight unseen. The stores would serve as showcases where people could view the items in person, with orders being delivered to their homes. Amazon has considered using forms of augmented or virtual reality to allow people to see how couches, stoves and credenzas will look in their homes.

Amazon is also kicking around an electronics-store concept similar to Apple’s retail emporiums. These shops would have a heavy emphasis on Amazon devices and services such as the company’s Echo smart home speaker and Prime Video streaming service.

Overseas, Amazon is quietly targeting India for new brick-and-mortar grocery stores. It is a vast market, and one still largely dominated by traditional street bazaars where shoppers must wander from stall to stall haggling over prices and deliberating over unrefrigerated meat sitting in the dusty open air. Amazon’s internal code name for its India grocery ambitions is Project Everest.