My forays into the shopping world of the future have met with mixed success. I love the idea of those auto checkout machine thingies, but 8 out of ten times that I use one I wind up having to wait for human assistance because something always gets messed up and it starts irritably repeating “Please place the item in the bag” over and over again and I’m like “DAMMIT THE ITEM IS IN THE GODDAMN BAG ALREADY WHATTHEHELLISWRONGWITHYOU!?”
And the stupid machine is like “PLEASE PLACE THE ITEM IN THE BAG YOU INCOMPETENT IDIOT!!!!” (The insult is implicit but I KNOW IT’S THERE.)
And I’m like “Stop yelling at me!”
And I always swear never to use one of those things again. And then I do and it works, but then the next five times it goes back to yelling at me, and I’m like this is ridiculous.
Well, Amazon’s new model for IRL shopping with your phone aims to do away with those nasty machines – as well as all other forms of interaction – with its new shopping experience initiative.
Mashable reports that today (Monday), the tech giant unveiled Amazon Go, its new model for in-store shopping.
The first store opened at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, and sells breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.
There are no cashiers and best of all, no lines. Customers use the new Amazon Go app which tracks what you take with computer vision, sensor fusion, deep learning and probably other stuff. Then you “Just Walk Out” (they’re calling it their new “Just Walk Out” technology).
As great as this looks, it’s kind of bad news for cashiers.
Check it out.