For Amazon, just opening a brick-and-mortar store is big news.
Now the House That Bezos Built is taking showrooms one step further by opening a storefront without checkout terminals.
Its new Amazon Go store in Seattle allows customers to pick whatever products they want off its shelves and leave without pulling out their wallets or smartphones.
Instead, customers scan their phones upon entering, and their Amazon accounts are automatically charged when they leave, with a receipt delivered soon after.
The store has been in development for four years and uses the same technologies that are driving driverless cars, the company said, including computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning — or what it calls “just walk out” technology.
So far the 1,800-square-foot shop is limited to food and beta-test employees, but Amazon plans to open it up to the public early in 2017. The implications for physical retail — especially coming from a company that built itself upon the supposed dust-bin of brick-and-mortar selling — are huge.
Have a look for yourself:
