Amazon is expanding its empire beyond the virtual space and into the real world. The online retail giant announced Amazon Go, a physical grocery store, where shoppers can just pick an item and basically just walk out of the store without so much as reaching for their wallet. All this is done by using just a phone and an app. It sounds fun and very futuristic.
Walk into the store, scan your phone by using the Amazon Go app and Amazon takes care of the rest. They keep close tabs on inventories, using a series of cameras, sensors and machine learning, similar to the technology found in self driving cars. So anything you buy will be automatically added to your virtual card and then charged to your account when you step out… No lines, no registers.
Amazon Go, “a new kind of store with no checkout required”, which the company calls “Just Walk Out” shopping. But it’s really an attempt to eradicate one of the more frustrating aspects of shopping in stores: the checkout line. Amazon opened a pilot store, currently running at Seattle but it is only accessible to Amazon employees for now. Amazon will officially launch Amazon Go some time in 2017.
