Amazon Go

I worked at a grocery store for several years, and one thing I recall is customers CONSTANTLY putting items back in a random aisle, rather than where they found it.

I wonder how this tech deals with that? Maybe they figured that out, too. But I was amused in the video when I saw the customer putting it back where it belonged, because that's not how I remember that going...

All that said, this is fantastic and exciting.

Edit: I also hope they're already thinking about EBT cards and WIC.

I really wouldn't trust 'picked up off the shelf' detection, not without the whole thing looking like a giant vending machine. RFID tags on products probably works better.

I don't think the system works like that.

From my first quick take of the video, the app+turnstyle is used to identify you to the store. The video system then tracks your position as you walk around.

When you walk out, the items are recognized and tallied by a large RFID sweep. Funneling you back out through a turnstyle makes sure the vision system knows it's you. Notice that you don't need to barcode yourself on the way out, and the exit system is phone agnostic (it's not checking for an NFC or Apple Pay tag or anything).

The whole "tracking individual items as they come on and off the shelves" task is a very complex thing. But tracking bodies as they walk around a 1,500 square foot room isn't that hard.

Not as crazy as it sounds. With RAIN Rfid you can get the xyz location of a tag from ~30ft away accurate to 6" in realtime.

Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1LykdRWTfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hCA8L7v-R8

I don't think that helps in the use case presented here.

What is really needed is a way to talk to multiple RFID tags quickly without any crosstalk. Think of a handbag with a dozen candy bars in it. How do you scan them all quickly without missing any?

The goal has always been to scan something large in one pass, say a shrink-wrapped pallet of items that could number in the hundreds or thousands. Obviously this is technology that Amazon could benefit from as well, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of technology overlap here.