The future of stores.

[karnos]

From 2006:


10 years later, almost there...



TBH, when I first started watching the Amazon video I thought it was a joke, like they were acting like a department store was some amazing new innovation.

It is interesting. An obvious win for the store owner in the long run, as it would greatly cut back on employee costs, and the ease and convenience would make it a win for customers. I can see there being a lot of bugs and minor issues initially, but I think this will soon* take over everywhere.

* This is "soon" as used by companies like Valve or Blizzard, i.e. 5+ years down the line.

[KuroiXHF]

From 2006:


10 years later, almost there...



TBH, when I first started watching the Amazon video I thought it was a joke, like they were acting like a department store was some amazing new innovation.

It is interesting. An obvious win for the store owner in the long run, as it would greatly cut back on employee costs, and the ease and convenience would make it a win for customers. I can see there being a lot of bugs and minor issues initially, but I think this will soon* take over everywhere.

* This is "soon" as used by companies like Valve or Blizzard, i.e. 5+ years down the line.

So I work in the security industry and from a loss prevention standpoint, I see some issues that will need to be kinked out. On one hand, people will try to use this as an opening by shoplifters. On the other hand, people won't want to be stopped all the time.

[karnos]

I was thinking about how you could fool the system, taking multiple items that are small and concealing one item behind another.

If the store is advanced enough, it might be that every shelf has an integrated scale, so it can tell how many items you take by weight even if the cameras don't pick everything up. Seems like that would be expensive, but still probably cheap compared to the cost of normal employee teams. They would still need employees to restock shelves from the back room, unless they have some crazy robots doing that stuff.

Then there is the old switch-boxes theft tactic, where the thief puts an expensive item in the box for a cheaper item, and leaves the cheaper item in the expensive item's box. Not sure the system could detect that if the items are weighed identically, but that does require a fair bit of work and you still on camera the whole time so it's risky. It might just be setup to work "good enough", even if there are still some ways to steal.

[Alchemist21]

Then there is the old switch-boxes theft tactic, where the thief puts an expensive item in the box for a cheaper item, and leaves the cheaper item in the expensive item's box. Not sure the system could detect that if the items are weighed identically, but that does require a fair bit of work and you still on camera the whole time so it's risky. It might just be setup to work "good enough", even if there are still some ways to steal.

If they try this switch tactic I think the proper solution would be to drop a giant boulder on them that will crush them as it rolls down the aisle.

[Cheery Dog]

I think at the start it's going to be too crowded and some stuff will be placed on the wrong persons account

[zoraster]

I wonder how it handles someone taking something, deciding they don't need it, and putting it in the wrong place.

[animorpherv1]

I wonder how it handles someone taking something, deciding they don't need it, and putting it in the wrong place.

I assume every item has its own code, so putting it in the wrong place would mean the assumed scanner/sensor/etc reads the code for the wrong item and just notes it's there.