Page 5 - Logistics News April 2018
P. 5
Thought Leadership
Amazon Go and the emergence
of sentient buildings
Courtesy ChainLink Research
Amazon Go’s
impressive advances
in computer vision,
sensor fusion and
deep learning
combine to create
what is probably the
simplest and fastest
bricks and mortar
shopping experience
available today.
THE AMAZON Go store in Seattle is about they perform this magic is speculation.
1,800 square feet. According to Amazon: “We The system uses the 2D barcode from the
think of Amazon Go as the fastest place to Amazon Go app on a phone to link whoever
grab handmade meals and snacks, essential has the phone to their Amazon account when
groceries and fresh, seasonal meal kits to go. they scan into the store. From the moment
No checkout. No waiting in line. Just good a customer scans and enters the store until
food, fast. It’s the first store with Just Walk they leave, the system needs to keep track of
Out Technology, which allows customers to them, where they are, what items they pick
grab what they want and just walk out.” up (and how many) and what items they set
down. Thus, it keeps a running tally of exactly
The user experience: getting started what items a customer walks out of the store
Customers download and install the 11MB with.
Amazon Go app, and, once installed, log in There are about 200 cameras in the
using an Amazon account ID and password. ceiling, all pointed at different angles and
The app displays a 2D barcode to identify a few thousand cameras mounted to the
the customer, which they then use to get into shelves. Under each shelf, at the front of the
the store. Once in the store, customers buy shelf, is a row of lights and cameras pointing
and pay for things by picking them up and down at the items on the shelf below. At least
walking out the store. some of the shelves have scales in them to
help detect when items are taken on or off
How it works the shelf.
Amazon is understandably fairly tight-lipped
about how this all works. They don’t want Computer vision, sensor fusion and deep
to make it easy for competitors to reverse learning
engineer their technology. As a result, a fair Amazon is using a combination of computer
amount of what has been written about how vision, sensor fusion and deep learning to
8 April 2018 | Logistics News