Frictionless Pick and Go
Tesco, a UK firm doing business in 11 countries, is testing a cashierless store design that goes beyond Amazon’s Go.
Tesco is not dependent on bar codes, RFID smart tags, or customer scanning.
Please consider Spurred by Amazon, Supermarkets Try Swapping Cashiers for Cameras
Tesco is one of several grocers testing cashierless stores with cameras that track what shoppers pick, so they pay by simply walking out the door.
Tesco’s 4,000-square-foot test store uses 150 ceiling-mounted cameras to generate a three-dimensional view of products as they are taken off shelves. In its recent demo, Tesco’s system detected shoppers as they walked around the store. It also identified a group of products when a person holding them stood in front of a screen, tallying up their total price. Tesco is considering identifying shoppers through an app or loyalty card when they enter the store and then charging their app when they leave.
Tesco told investors its method costs one-tenth of systems used by its competitors, partly because it only uses cameras. Amazon Go uses cameras and sensors to track what shoppers pick. Amazon customers scan a QR code at a gate when they enter a store, then walk out when finished.
French retail giant Carrefour SA is also running tests in at least two stores where cameras track what is taken off shelves and shoppers are charged automatically when they leave. Carrefour is working with French startup Qopius Technology, whose cameras and software can read labels on products.
Limitations
For now, Tesco’s pick and go is only in use at smaller stores and it’s still a test.
And what about something like a bunch of bananas or a handful of potatoes?
The technology seems better suited for department stores that do not have weigh-priced items and for which it would be easier to place a RFID tag.
Then again, who needs department stores? Amazon and online retailers are killing those stores.
The bottom line is the same in either case, the end of cashiers is coming.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Mish there’s A new open( no censor per se) site “Pocketnet” your blog topics would fit in. just saying in my opinion
yeah what could go wrong ? ‘walk in run out” Flash mobs will have field day
Like driverless cars, I suspect in a couple of years, it will still be a prototype.
How does it handle people putting the wrong product in the wrong place? Or someone puts a can of beans back where the soup is?
I think something more realistic is having a scale in the cart. You scan an item and place it in the cart. The exact same way the current self checkout works. The scale can also weigh produce that’s sold by the pound. You select bananas and then when you place it in the cart, it detects the weight.
“The bottom line is the same in either case, the end of cashiers is coming.”
Bottom line, the end of purchasing privacy is coming. Everyone will be profiled by what products they buy. How many points will it count in one’s social credit score?
I grew up in a town with 145 residents and 2 general stores. Store keepers knew everyone by sight and pretty much remembered purchasing preferences. We considered this a friendly commercial relationship. Now is considered privacy invasion.
Just curious… did those store keepers sell your data to advertisers?
Did the store keepers collate your purchases with other stores?
Did the store keepers note that you bought Preparation H and then suggest to your friends that they may be interested in a similar purchase?
And if your store keepers are anything like the ones in my town, gossip is flying off the shelves.
You make some interesting points about selling data to advertisers. I don’t think that was possible. Also, you are right that there was a ton of gossip.
I am not defending the FANG companies’ practices but neither do I have a lot of anxiety about them at the moment. Indeed, I think the practices we should be anxious about are those of the investment banks, hedge funds, high speed traders and zombie companies that are soaking up value without returning it to society in the form of economic growth.
In another post here recently, I said this: I hold an MBA degree from a good school. More and more I am beginning to think I and my fellow MBA degree holders are largely responsible for so much of the world’s grief. Our roles in profit maximization in Boeing and banking should be exhibit 1.
I think we should be more afraid of people like me.
MBA’s from solid schools (like mine) are not the problem. The degree doesn’t hold thinking capacity, terpitude, or parental guidance of things right and wrong at a young age. Afraid of people like you but not for the reasons you think. Schools tell you what to think….not how to think. The how was implanted long ago. You overpaid for your degree.
If you think MBA programs do not provide the tools to do exactly what I said, then you are the one who likely overpaid. They provide minimal education in ethics and maximum education in profit maximization and return to shareholders, without any view toward the greater good.
Either you didn’t read what I wrote, or you didn’t understand. Either way you proved my point.
I see. Well, why don’t we leave it here. I make it a point never to match wits with an unarmed man.
I like your philosophy / Business Plan Cat.
There’s an inherent imbalance in the different marketplaces. The capital markets move at sub-millisecond speed and have no friction, banking/credit markets slightly slower with some friction, and the physical (wholesale/retail) move at mechanical speed and the friction that entails. What’s a CEO to do? If a project will take more than a few weeks to implement Wall Street will be happy to wait until it is successful to move the stock up. Meanwhile stock buybacks and other manipulations take no time at all and live completely in the frictionless world. M&A is largely a function of getting an interest rate that lets you use future cashflow to fund the acquisition, which is very easy to do in today’s banking sector. And because that activity tends to lead to monopolies or duopolies there’s no risk to doing nothing to improve your product.
After living in NYC for a few years, and watching the creative ways people used to jump subway turnstiles — my money is on the hooligans making a complete mockery of this technology. The NY transit authority has a massive police force (above and beyond the NYC police force) trying to chase down turnstile jumpers. According to the transit authority, the turnstile jumpers are winning.
Vending machines, where the goods are “locked up” until the consumer inserts money are far from infallible either.
The hooligans will take a bat or a crowbar (or a garbage can) and smash the front window of the cashierless / unguarded store. Their group is waiting to loot the store as soon as the opening is made, and they are gone by the time the police arrive.
If the store installs smash proof glass, the hooligans will steal a car and drive it through the front wall, their homeboys waiting just to the side to commence looting when the opening is made. Unbreakable glass also makes for a fire hazard against paying customers.
The hooligans are going to win in every large city.
In small towns, stores are like office water coolers — its where people get their local news and see their neighbors. A soulless camera and UPC scanner just isn’t the same
At the Glendale Galleria, they have signs warning people of car license readers and facial recognition technology- against those who park in their garage and go to other downtown stores, bypassing Gallaria stores.
At some point facial recognition software will be largely perfected and cameras will blanket every public space.
You are assuming the hooligans will use their own car. Why not just steal your car and use that? Free stuff for them, and you get the blame.
You are hardly the first person to suggest technology will be “perfected”. As dumb as they are, the hooligans will find a way
At the end of the day, it is far more costly to police and enforce this stuff than it is to let a few get away with it. Just put warning signs up and leave it at that. A bit like a Beware of the Dog sign on your gate at home – even though you don’t have one.
“facial recognition software will be largely perfected”
That is hilarious – “perfected” technology. Several vendors are already selling hats and shirts that feature patterns designed to confuse facial recognition cameras. The top software doesn’t even see a person, much less identify the face.
The US military has been working with “perfected” technology for decades. Laser guided bombs that blow the ^&)$ out of wedding parties in Yemen. Missiles that can hit the third window on the second floor of a building in Bosnia… lets hope it wasn’t the Chinese embassy because they werent involved in the conflict.
And then there are the telemarketers who regularly defeat call filters. They sometimes even clog 911 call centers. Perfected technology indeed.
I doubt many current cashiers are able to stop a gang of hooligans driving in through the front of a store.
It will be far cheaper for the store to place concrete/steel posts in front of the store and hire a couple of security guards instead of 6 cashiers to prevent this.
Driving a car thru a window is destroying property. Driving a car thru a bunch of cashiers is murder.
The hooligans are humans with certain ethical standards, even if their ethics are different from techies. Murder is a big step from property destruction.
The whole world is becoming a casino floor.
link to youtube.com
Already happening in China for over two years. This is a paradigm shift that can only be done by technology, not cash!! Personally, I won’t be using this. I’m a big supporter of cash over government control, and you should be too.
Lots of people want to use cash, its only human
Its some guy buying condoms to use with his mistress. Its the girl buying a pregnancy test kit without her parents knowing. its any person buying any number of embarrassing items without having FB or Google relay that info to every advertiser in the world.
If you are human, you have something embarrassing that you don’t tell even your closest friends. Maybe your friends already know, but you aren’t about to admit it.
Cash isn’t going anywhere, no matter what FB or Google claim.
PS – Chinese consumers have already found numerous ways to circumvent cashless vendors. In addition, there is always barter and teens have been hiring a proxy to buy beer for them for decades