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Inside Amazon Go
- dingo_bat 9y agoGet ready for some insanity in the next decade as this tech is adopted by walmart. https://i.redd.it/shbv27xwmzoy.png https://i.redd.it/shbv27xwmzoy.png
- eloff 9y agoNo shopping carts? Maybe for a convenience store that's ok. I shop at Costco without a car, and I bring two large carry bags. But I don't carry them around inside the store unless I'm just buying one or two things. I buy a lot of heavy things (oh god those watermelons, never again.) And I don't want my arms getting tired in the store. It's bad enough for the 1.5km I have to walk back to my place.
- symlinkk 9y agoFor the first time in history we have a grocery store without cashiers, and you’re nitpicking that there’s no shopping carts?
- ceejayoz 9y agoWhy should something new be immune from constructive criticism?
- dEnigma 9y agoWhat does one thing have to do with the other? Shopping carts are useful even without cashiers.
- excalibur 9y agoWithout carts your customers can only purchase as many items as they can physically carry. As the business owner, you are of course free to not provide any, if you hate profit.
- robotresearcher 9y agoIt’s an urban small market not a wholesale store.
- akhilcacharya 9y agoThere’s not enough space for shopping carts to make sense.
- aviv 9y agoThe innovation in rethinking the convenience store is not only in the technology, but also the fact that they're likely going to not sell nasty gas station snacks.
- phillipcarter 9y agoThe latter point isn't an innovation. My local grocery store (not a big franchise) doesn't sell nasty snacks, either. They've been in business a lot longer than Amazon.
- aviv 9y agoThe innovation part is how this Go store has the power to bring healthy snacks into general convenience stores and gas stations and getting the disease causing ones to be pushed out.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoWhy are you patting Amazon so hard on the back over this hypothesis? The article didn't mention anything about it; Walmart, Target, 7-11 all have the exact same power, but don't exercise it. Why do you think Amazon Go will push healthy snacks over deep-fried candybars?
- aviv 9y agoWhole foods. Amazon is going upmarket, not down.
- heimidal 9y agoThere's no evidence that Amazon bought Whole Foods because it's an upmarket grocery store and avoided others. It's very likely that Amazon will eventually buy a "normal" grocery chain and serve as large of a population as possible.
- phillipcarter 9y ago
- makomk 9y ago"Amazon won’t say much about how the system works, other than to say it involves sophisticated computer vision and machine learning software." Why do I have the feeling this probably actually translates to humans staring at video feeds a lot of the time?
- aviv 9y agoThe "Our AI/ML technology is in Bangladesh" rollout
- pupppet 9y agoHeh I bet you’re right. >“We’ve just put associates on different kinds of tasks where we think it adds to the customer experience,” Ms. Puerini said.
- Guest9812398 9y agoI imagine it's similar to the below video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeS8TJwBAFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeS8TJwBAFs
- cm2187 9y agoI wonder how resilient it is to real life shoppers who pick things, then put them back at the wrong place.
- JCharante 9y ago55 seconds in it does show them grabbing misplaced items, if that's what you mean.
- TheEzEzz 9y agoJordan from Standard Cognition here (that's a video of our autonomous checkout system). We don't depend on the shelf location an item came from. You can put things back anywhere you like and the system behaves just fine. It's one of the advantages of using a pure vision system as opposed to a sensor fusion approach with sensors on the shelves.
- chiefofgxbxl 9y agoGiven Amazon's knowledge in warehouse operations and supply chain, I wouldn't guess they plan to use this technology widespread in grocery stores. At that point, they could take a simpler approach than all the cameras and computer vision, by instead treating a grocery store like a warehouse or vending machine (no human shoppers like other grocers today who offer delivery). People enter their orders online, and stop by in person to collect their cart at the front desk. All the food would be behind closed doors. Only downside to that is customers who want to leisure shop and browse for new items.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoThat will probably be an option, but I'd wager that a lot of purchases are snap decisions. You want hungry people in your store, looking at all your attractively packaged food.
- wickawic 9y agoI don’t see this being viable. Most people shop with at least a small amount of whimsy. This is why end-caps and samples and grocery store psychology exist. And I think this is a feature, not a bug: there is something satisfying about picking out the right bananas, realizing Brussels sprouts would go well with dinner, substituting ingredients on the fly, etc. the online shopping experience has none of this, which is why I think grocery delivery has not yet taken over. Food is visual and visceral, and doesn’t lend itself to drop-down menus.
- taurath 9y agoThe whole store is designed for you to run back and forth finding and discovering items.
- paulie_a 9y agoAmazon sort of does that with freshly. Same with instacart
- aslkdjaslkdj 9y agoThey are testing that in Seattle as well. https://www.amazon.com/afx/nc/aboutpickup https://www.amazon.com/afx/nc/aboutpickup
- dawhizkid 9y agoAnyone in NYC who regularly shops at Trader Joes or Whole Foods knows how badly this is needed. There are literally two employees at Trader Joes whose job it is to hold a sign that says "End of Line" because the line is always almost out the door on weekends and weekday evenings.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoBut won't someone please think of the poor, unemployed "end of line" sign holders? Whatever will they do!
- sundaeofshock 9y agoGet some torches and pitchforks? Seriously, what do you think will happen when we have millions who lose their jobs due to automation?
- pps43 9y agoSame thing that happened when manual switchboard operators lost their jobs to PBX, or manual typesetters lost their job to linotypes?
- stale2002 9y agoSame thing as been happening for the last 50 years as automation has vastly replaced human labor, without bringing about the revolution? Or in other words, people will get a different job, and there will be winners and losers, but on AVERAGE everyone's lives will be way better (as has been proven for the last 50 years).
- iagooar 9y agoWhy not use these people as cashiers? I wonder if this endless line thing is something typical in the US. I've been to many European countries and other than before Christmas, you never feel like staying in line is something to even think of, because the longest you usually wait is maybe 5 minutes. In Switzerland, now that in many shops you get to scan the cart yourself (after shopping or during it) there is just no congestion at all, even on a busy Saturday. How is it in your countries?
- panarky 9y agoThere were a little over 3.5 million cashiers in the United States in 2016 — and some of their jobs may be in jeopardy if the technology behind Amazon Go eventually spreads. Why is this the knee-jerk response to technological progress? True progress isn't forcing millions of people into low-wage routine work. True progress would emancipate people from this drudgery entirely. Isaac Asimov questioned why the goal of both the left and the right is always "full employment": "The goal of the future should be full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system."
- arebop 9y agoIt is because we have no scalable mechanism in society to provide for the basic needs of the "emancipated." Sure, in theory the automation yields a surplus, but in practice how do we actually allocate the surplus? Not to the economically useless, that's for sure.
- bcherny 9y agoWhat do you mean? There’s a lot of work on this by various economists, including modern socialists like Picketty. The big ideas are distributing ownership of things (goods, land, means of production), capital, and education in a way that is fair (definitions vary) and doesn’t disincentivize production.
- jjoonathan 9y agoIt's easy to come up with ideas, it's nearly impossible to muster the political capital to actually try them.
- dyyni 9y ago>Why is this the knee-jerk response of many journalists in response to technological progress? Maybe because our society isn’t ready for such changes. The American system especially lacks safety nets and social security systems to support those without a job. The way things are now is that one needs to have a job to be able to “play”. One solution would be to tax the robots that replace the working class. Otherwise the only ones to gain are the ones who own the robots.
- akhilcacharya 9y agoI used it a few times a few months ago, amazingly cool technology. Closest feeling to magic I’ve seen recently.
- 21 9y agoNext level magic: you enter the shop and a little robot hands you a bag with what you were going to buy anyway.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoI know the standard reaction from a lot of HN folk will be to celebrate this progress: it's faster, more efficient, and no one likes to waste time waiting in line. Still, though, I think Amazon's automation of the retail experience is helping to create a society where there is even less real social interaction, and I think it's a factor (if even a small one currently) in the increasing tribalism in American society. Throughout history, "the marketplace" had been one of the major centers of interpersonal interaction, and these days for many people it's possibly to completely avoid ever having to go to the store. I'm not sure that's a great thing.
- threatofrain 9y agoThe marketplace today is hardly the place for meaningful interaction, whether with employees or other shoppers. What it seems like to me is unpaid emotional labor. To have interesting social time, we need less hours at work and more public (non-commercial) spaces to meet. For example, where are children supposed to meet?
- dennisdamenace 9y agoI often learn a lot at the check out lines here in Oregon. People chat, exchange information. Often banal, sometimes valuable. Always nice.
- hn_throw2 9y agoI'm sorry, but it's completely unclear how nice chats do anything to resolve "American tribalism", or, more pertinently, why it's the responsibility of marketplace owners to generate squares of social interaction at all. Even if this slight increase in social interaction did anything ("cash or credit?" -- "Credit, ma'am"), that's as ridiculous as fixing race conditions with sleep() calls (hehe, race conditions).
- 1024core 9y agoWhy use a throwaway account? But to answer your comment: the comment was not about the chit-chat with the cashier, but other people in the line.
- mhb 9y agoNo shopping carts? If that's not a signal that this is, at best, half-baked, I don't know what is.
- jvagner 9y agoIt says right at the beginning the concept is like a 7-11. Are there carts in a 7-11?
- mhb 9y agoHmm. You're right. Missed it.
- d6e 9y agoI've noticed several grocery stores in the largest cities I've been in (Shanghai and Tokyo) lack carts both due to space constraints and because people visit on their way home either to or from the train station. Shopping carts are mostly necessary/convenient in suburban environments where you have to drive to bigbox stores because you live too far away. Judging by the area of the city that Amazon Go is in and the ubiquitous housing nearby. I suspect this is the model they're going for.
- tuna-piano 9y agoI love this - shows why Amazon keeps growing. Seems like the total investment in this store/technology is probably in the single digit digit millions (or maybe low double digit). If it doesn't work? Lose, ~$10 million. But if it works there's likely huge upside. It's just a smart bet for a big company. Sometimes your bets turn into AWS, and sometimes they turn into the Fire phone. Most companies I've worked at are very risk averse, and failure on startup type projects is not really accepted the same way. The checkout system was the failed promise of RFID[1], and maybe the future is still with RFID. But maybe it's with vision, and if it is, then Amazon seems well positioned. BTW, the rudimentary math I'm doing. Let's say the store saves two checkout people, working on average 20 hours a day for 365 days a year, who each average cost of $15/hr. $15/hr 20 hours365 days*2 people = $219k savings per year. How much does the system cost to setup in a new store? How much extra effort is there to keep food items organized? If you need someone checking IDs, managing errors, etc, is there really savings? Maybe the only way this really scales is if you can do this for full size stores? [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eob532iEpqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eob532iEpqk
- bachaco 9y ago>Seems like the total investment in this store/technology is probably in the single digit digit millions (or maybe low double digit). It was much more than that. They bought Whole Foods which was worth 13 billion.
- pests 9y agoThe article didn't state this was related to Whole foods besides stocking some product. This could be done completely independently.
- mft_ 9y agoAmazon Go had very little to do with Whole Foods. It may, one day, but to link the cost of buying Whole Foods to the cost of development of Go is inaccurate.
- eli 9y agoI always assumed the whole thing was mostly to demo the tech, which they will then sell to other retailers.
- avg_dev 9y agohere I was thinking this was about bringing Go to AWS Lambda :)
- yodon 9y agoWondering if the grand opening will lead to a spontaneous HN and Deep Neural Nets meetup at Top Pot Donuts on 5th tomorrow.
- FLUX-YOU 9y agoAttacks I'd like to try but would get picked up by the cops if I did: - Carry empty bags/containers of cheaper items in the store and place products inside these before pulling them off of the shelf. - Pull products off of the shelf and give them to a friend. Place identical empty bags/containers back to re-credit your account while your friend never has the item debited and walks out. - Drape a blanket over yourself and remove products from the shelf and put them in your bags so the system never sees items removed from the shelf
- Armisael16 9y agoI haven’t the foggiest about the first two, but I’m going to guess that one of the workers would notice you cover yourself up with a blanket.
- yodon 9y agoAmazon has had this store open for employees to use for some time. Think of that time as a massive bug bash hacking project where really smart people are encouraged to try to find ways to wreak havoc with the system. There are undoubtedly attacks still to find but Amazon is definitely not being clueless about this.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago>There are undoubtedly attacks still to find but Amazon is definitely not being clueless about this. They likely have people watching the cameras full-time and will just report you to the cops if they see sleight-of-hand, now with identification and an address since you have to show your Amazon account when walking in. This is probably forever tenable to the bottom line since they're eliminating cashiers and security folks aren't paid that much more than cashiers anyway. There's also probably a healthy amount of resolution and numerous camera angles that it'll be impossible for your face to not be picked up. Even using a fake account, you're still likely to have something Amazon-related installed on your phone that can be traced back to a telecom account. And really, none the effort to avoid getting caught/traced is worth it to steal some bags of chips.
- 9y ago
- andrewseanryan 9y agoWelllll. Now that idea for a Smart Shopping Cart that I drew up 10 years is completely obsolete hahaha. Like it or not, this Amazon Go store is a model for all future brick and mortar establishments. In 20 years we will recall the good old days when we waited in line and used cash much like people look back at the time when people sent cards and letters before email.
- srtjstjsj 9y agoThe smart-cart seeems a much simpler, cheaper solution than the smart-store, doesn't it? Scanning cart items is trivial in comparison to tracking objects moving through the whole store
- sytelus 9y agoYes, they also eliminate edge cases like customer taking item from shelf A and putting it back on Shelf B. Also they are easily deployable in any stores without putting in lots of cameras all over.
- sAbakumoff 9y agoThat is terrible. Not only it takes away jobs, it also gives Amazon the unprecedented access to the sensitive information about customers. I would never go to this store. Fortunately something like this will never happen in our beautiful Europe.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoIt definitely will. Self-checkout is widely available in Europe. The laws about data and privacy will be different but this is a customer experience / labor cost play, not a ploy to get data.
- sAbakumoff 9y agoSelf checkout is a way different from thousands of video cameras that track all your moves, selection habits, etc.
- criddell 9y agoThere's a pretty good chance that stores in Europe have video cameras already there tracking where customers move, what they look at, what expressions are on their face when they read signs, etc...
- sAbakumoff 9y agoI highly doubt so. The data privacy laws are pretty strict here.
- Kiro 9y agoAm I the only one living in a country where most stores have self-checkout already? The comments here make it sound like it's either Amazon Go or having to pay through a cashier. Jobs and social interaction have already been elminated by self-checkout. The revolution with Amazon Go is that you don't need to scan anything yourself, not that it removes the cashier.
- fatihacet 9y agoPlus Amazon Go eliminates the payment process. When you think how much time you lost by scanning every item and paying via cash or credit card. Amazon Go is much more easier and quicker.
- dx034 9y agoContactless payments take less than 5 seconds. For 5-10 items, I can scan and pay in less than a minute. And that without being registered for that store.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoMany stores in the USA already have self checkout, and have had it for a decade or so. Go just eliminates the checkout process all together.
- pcurve 9y agoMaybe I'm weird, but I enjoy self checkout line. Picking up each item, looking for barcode, scanning it, and bagging, is kind of fun activity to do every once in awhile. The only lame part is, "please place the item in the bag" mechanism.
- matte_black 9y agoI kind of agree, I try to even make a mini game out of seeing how fast I can checkout.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
- blibble 9y agonot entirely serious, but not entirely joking: in a world where all stores are like this; you drop your phone and it smashes, can you still buy food? (what about people without phones?)
- iandioch 9y agoIt looks like you need to scan in on the way into the shop. If your phone runs out of the battery, is it impossible to eat?
- samfriedman 9y agoMaybe a physical barcode card combined with some kind of biometric (thumbprint, faceID, microbiome biopsy) could form an "offline" backup authentication.
- 21 9y agoI don't think we're that far away from not even needing the phone at all - it might actually be a "privacy feature", ie: give you the illusion that they don't know already who you are.
- Tiktaalik 9y agoThis is totally a real problem. I just celebrated my grandmother's 90th birthday. She still lives independently and regularly goes shopping. She doesn't own a mobile phone, let alone a smart phone. In a world where services that require phones are dominant, choice narrows for elderly and low income persons.
- rtkwe 9y agoThere's a lot of ways around the broken/lost/phone-less populations in a system like this. The phone doesn't really do any more than provide the initial authentication and receipt delivery. If these really took off and started replacing normal systems it'd be really easy to add a receipt printer and to add a card reader for a 'members card' that does the same thing as the QR code on the phone.
- 9y ago
- ckdarby 9y agoHN stop supporting sites that block information with paywalls
- grzm 9y agoThe HN policy on paywalled articles in general is clear. 'dang has commented specifically on the NY Times as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003345
- paulddraper 9y agoSo no subscriptions, no anti-AdBlock...I guess that leaves us Buzzfeed journalism for free?
- heinrichf 9y agoTechcrunch article with additional technical details: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/21/inside-amazons-surveillance-powered-no-checkout-convenience-store/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/21/inside-amazons-surveillanc... > ordinary RGB cameras, custom made with boards in the enclosure to do some basic grunt computer vision work, presumably things like motion detection, basic object identification, and so on. They’re augmented by separate depth-sensing cameras (using a time-of-flight technique, or so I understood from Kumar) that blend into the background like the rest, all matte black. The images captured from these cameras are sent to a central processing unit. > In addition to the cameras, there are weight sensors in the shelves, and the system is aware of every item’s exact weight
- srtjstjsj 9y agoImagine when Amazon sells this system to Palantir and police departments for use all over town.
- callumjones 9y agoAnd does what with it?
- matte_black 9y agoCan’t wait to try this experience. I will be flying up to go see it myself and purchase a few things.
- Disruptive_Dave 9y agoLess human interaction, less discomfort, easier to spend money faster. Sounds so wonderful! /s
- reallyhnlol 9y agoLeave it to HN to spend 100 comments arguing about whether or not we’ve suffered some great loss by not being able to have social interaction at the grocery store instead of things like, I don’t know, the continued unemployment of humans by megacorporations automating jobs.
- ggm 9y agoIf we're clever enough to empower people to be responsible to shop without human oversight to charge, why don't we stop including money in the transaction and instead of shopping, we're just taking what we need? I dont understand what the role of money is in this situation if its taken to its logical conclusion. I bet Jeff Buysus wants to keep it there, however..
- nyolfen 9y agogalaxy brain
- samwillis 9y agoWaitrose in the UK has had something called "Quick Check" for maybe the last 10 years. On the way into the store, you swipe your "My Waitrose" card and collect a barcode scanner. You then scan and bag everything on the way around and return your scanner to a dedicated terminal (which generally have no queue) and very quickly pay. More recently they added the ability to use your smartphone as the scanner so that you don't even need to pick up a barcode reader. They are only one step away from allowing you to pay with your smartphone and walk out... although as it's at the terminal they ID you if you have any restricted items that seem unlikely. Every once in a while (I have had it once in 5 years of shopping there weekly) they will flag you for a "rescan" to check you scanned everything. It's a brilliant system and doesn't require hundreds of cameras and machine learning.
- perseusprime11 9y agoWhat happens when you bag something without scanning?
- oh_sigh 9y ago10% of the time you get caught and then are scabbed by an employee every time you come in(like normal)
- dingaling 9y agoWith the Tesco system in the UK, if you are rescanned by an employee on a random scan and are found to have a mismatch then your Clubcard ( that you swipe to release a hand-scanner from the racks ) is marked as ineligible, and you have to go through the self-service or normal tills in future.
- empath75 9y agoGiant has that here and it’s a huge pain in the ass and takes way more time than just going through the checkout line to scan everything while you’re shopping, if you’re buying anything more than a few items.
- 9y ago
- spking 9y agoNo paywall: https://outline.com/KhsPDb https://outline.com/KhsPDb
- Flammy 9y agoWhen I installed the app it mentions you can let others buy stuff from your account with a single phone on entry(kids, friend, etc). There is an animation that shows you tap your phone in, send your friend in, then re-tap yourself in. Didn't see this mentioned anywhere, and I thought it was kinda neat.
- rtkwe 9y agoKind of confirms what I'd always thought, that they'd associate a face/person with an account/shopping basket then track that through the rest of the store instead of doing any phone based tracking.
- janekm 9y agoThere is a company opening similar types of supermarkets and corner stores in China. But they have taken it a step further, there aren’t even any gates. The experience feels really surreal... you just pick something off the shelf, scan it with the app, pay in the app (helped by the seamless mobile payment services in China), and walk out. The first time I tried it I couldn’t help finding an employee to show them I paid. The second time I just walked out after paying, but it actually felt uncomfortably like shoplifting (similar to what’s described in this article). I presume the shops are set up as a sort of VC-funded experiment that will accept a high level of theft in return for a lot of useful data and early positioning in this type of retail. The other interesting aspect is that the larger of the stores is set up very much as an experiential shopping environment, including a meat counter with chefs that will cook a steak or burger for you, and the same for sea food (you can buy shrimp or a lobster and they will cook it for you so you can eat it in the store, it is very popular).
- morgante 9y ago> But they have taken it a step further, there aren’t even any gates... scan it with the app I consider that strictly inferior, not "one step forward." The genius of Amazon Go is that no scanning is involved. You just take things off the shelf and they're automatically charged to you as you walk out.
- janekm 9y agoThat’s true, though one advantage for the consumer is that at least you get a chance to confirm that you really did want to take that $40 lobster ;) For the store an advantage is saving space, the Chinese ones are in really expensive prime real estate areas.
- aioprisan 9y agoYou get to confirm it before checking out, there's an app listing items added to the shopping cart.
- hbosch 9y ago
- jwiley 9y agoNext step in operation Foie gras: Amazon connects a tube to your mouth and pushes corn through it, automatically deducting the cost from your credit card. Totally effortless shopping
- seanwilson 9y agoI haven't seen anyone discuss the technology...can this really be reliable? It mentions cameras above the shop floor and machine learning. What do the cameras look for? Are there special visual markets on the products to make this task more robust? If not, there surely must be caveats? Are RFID tags not a more elegant solution? Or are they too expensive?
- rtkwe 9y agoRFID tags have a lot of problems among them that unless you get every manufacturer on board for labeling all the products in your store you're going to have to spend a lot of time labeling products before shelving. It's also a continuous cost per item either from the manufacturer or from the in house labeling process where a static system like Amazon Go can track without adding a per item cost. It's also not good enough to be the only system in a store because it's easy to block the signal using a foil lined bag so the store will already need another system at least as good as RFID at tracking things coming off the shelves. As for what they look for that's the secret sauce but there's a few things that are pretty clear from descriptions. They seem to be using mainly (only?) cameras for the identification. Luckily branding is pretty prominent so they have a pretty convenient thing for their item labeling to look for in the feeds. For cart shopping there's some simple things like tracking people with their faces from when they enter then adding items to their cart when they move an item outside a defined shelf region.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Markoff 9y agothis seem like really backward thinking, the future is to eliminate visiting shop, not simplifying checkout process I don't want to step in shop at all, I want my grocery delivered to my door and the delivery guy/drone can on the way out throw my trash. I was doing this in China (it helps to live in city with concentration of 20 million people), they even offer the throwing trash service though didn't went further into that step
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ShotgunJed 9y agoInteresting. Though I would expect that it would be at least a decade or two before this reaches other countries outside of the US.
- chiph 9y agoI wonder what would happen if you reached through a gap in the products (perhaps one is a big seller and the shelf location is empty) and pulled an item from the back of the next product's location. Like - reaching where the strawberry Pop-Tarts are normally stocked, to remove a box of the cinnamon flavored. (Why would you do this? Normally the older product is on the front of the shelf so it gets sold first) Your hand would be out of view of the ceiling-mounted cameras so it can't see directly (covered up by the shelf above). Your arm would be in the strawberry opening but you'd pull out a cinnamon. Is it's vision system good enough to tell the difference from the packaging, or does it just go off position when you pull it off the shelf?