Business execs are alway looking for way to cut costs, and replacing supermarket check-out workers with smart machines is an appealing project for the green eye-shade guys.
Another food innovation from the tech brainiacs is the Amazon Go store where you can grab a sandwich and leave with the cost being automatically deducted from your smart phone. That’s fine for people who want a quick lunch, but that won’t work for how most people shop to stock the fridge.
Below, stores have already trained some shoppers to check out their own items.
Meanwhile, investment is going forward to develop self-checkout stores.
Will the customers co-operate? My local Safeway underwent a major remodel a couple years back and installed four DIY checkouts. They are used mostly by young people and those who have only a few items. Was that enough to eliminate a human worker or two?
Clearly the big picture is to eliminate millions of human workers from retail shopping, and we are being trained to accept it.
SoftBank leads $30 million investment in Accel Robotics for AI-enabled cashierless stores, Venturebeat.com, December 3, 2019
Accel Robotics, one of a growing number of AI startups that’s setting out to enable automated cashierless stores, has raised $30 million in a series A round of funding led by SoftBank, with participation from New Ground Ventures, Toyo Kanetsu Corporate Venture Investment Partnership, and RevTech Ventures.
Founded out of San Diego in 2015, Accel Robotics is developing the AI and computer vision smarts needed for checkout-free stores, which are designed to make queuing a thing of the past and will generate vast swathes of consumer data. The general idea is that the shopper simply walks into a store, picks items from the shelves, and then walks out again — with the receipt sent directly to their mobile device.
Accel Robotics has largely flown under the radar compared to other companies operating in the burgeoning cashierless store sphere, but it said it is already working on deployments across North America and Japan — including in restaurants and drugstore chains.
Amazon is arguably the highest profile cashier-free store operator, and since the ecommerce giant debuted its concept Amazon Go stores back in 2016, it has expanded the outlets to 18 locations across the U.S. (Continues)
