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AWS Just Walk Out Technology

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Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#51

Post by londons_explore »

wenc wrote: post #36
asah wrote: post #15

Meh - I was excited by JWO but it now looks like self-checkout will win because it works pretty well these days, and it handles all the corner cases including product sold by weight, large items, identical-looking items (common in grocery), etc. With self-checkout, you don't need an account which is crucial for travelers. Self-checkout also supports cash for the unbanked. I've tried SC in multiple countries, just hit…

> I'm not even sure how much floor space JWO saves vs self-checkout. Not sure JWO is about saving floor space. It's more about saving the customer time. A grocery line on a Saturday afternoon is frustrating. Imagine Costco having this. JWO works with products sold by weight (like produce -- it uses sensor fusion with weight sensors), large items and identical-looking items too. I tried it last week at Amazon Fresh. I…

I worry how accurate it is. An error of just a few grams overcharging a customer will get Amazon in trouble with regulators. While just a few grams less cuts out the whole profit margin.

Remember that the Amazon weighing shelves have to deal with someone putting produce across two shelves (ie. A an apple balanced so it is partially weighed by one shelf and partially by another).

Since the shelves are large (ie. 10 foot tall), they also have to deal with the buffeting air from air conditioners in the shop, while still detecting someone taking a 5 gram SIM card pack...

Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#52

Post by londons_explore »

newaccount74 wrote: post #34
eightysixfour wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With self-checkout, you don't need an account which is crucial for travelers. At non-Amazon branded JWO locations you insert a credit card in the machine when you walk in, no account needed. I recently encountered one like this at an airport.

I just returned from a trip in Asia where 50% of machines did not accept any of my cards. In one case (parking garage) I asked a passerby to pay for me with their card, and gave them cash. While I enjoy that I can pay everything by card at home, and mostly stopped going to the handful of places that don't accept cards, I do appreciate the fact that cash is usually available as a backup.

Many American credit cards don't support some of the security features required in other countries. For example they might not support the card itself knowing your available balance so that small transactions like parking can be done entirely offline, and the parking garage collecting a cryptographic proof from your card that you have $3.50 available in your account. Remember that to do this, your card has to offer such proof in whatever currency the parking garage uses.

Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#53

Post by londons_explore »

sdoering wrote: post #20
nprateem wrote: post #7

Expect to have to install an app for every store you want to go into over the next few years with all the accompanying snooping. This tech is a wet dream for retailers. Who needs store cards when they can just see in realtime what you're picking up and putting back, along with your demographic data.

You mean like trying to drive through Germany in an electric car and having multiple standards/vendors for the chargers each with their own app, no cash, no maestro or credit card option. Especially funny when in an area with poor mobile reception (basically rendering the charger somewhat useless). Having these competing non-standards is a pita for customers as well as for adoption. I would think that it would be the…

So far those EV chargers are mostly funded by government incentives and store owners trying to attract rich clients.

When the EV charger industry gets cutthroat competitive on the service itself, the requirements to use an app will probably vanish because they don't want you to pass on their charger just because of the friction of signing up.

Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#54

Post by vladvasiliu »

sdoering wrote: post #23
tbrownaw wrote: post #6

> 60 percent of respondents state that long wait times to check out are a major concern while shopping in a store. The report also revealed that 80 percent of retail executive respondents believe that smart checkout is one of the most important solutions to invest in over the next five years. The local Kroger instances here have these handheld things you can use to scan items as you put them in your cart rather than…

> 60 percent of respondents state that long wait times to check out are a major concern while shopping in a store. There is an easy fix: hire people to ensure that wait time is minimal by opening as much checkout isles as possible. But in the economists wet dream the automated, humanless solution wins by being cheaper. > The report also revealed that 80 percent of retail executive respondents believe that smart check…

> But in the economists wet dream the automated, humanless solution wins by being cheaper.

Because the consumers will, usually, choose to go to the cheaper store.

> Absolutely, because you have no need to pay additional squishy meat sacks when people/shoppers can do the work themselves with self checkout. Externalise the cost onto the customer.

As opposed to the "squishy meat"'s salary, which is paid by... whom?

Also, I'd say that the actual scanning is not the most "labor-intensive" / annoying part of the checkout process, but moving the products out of the basket, onto the cash register, back in the bag. And even with regular checkout, the customer does that. With self-checkout, you can actually do the scanning while moving the product from the basket to your bag, which means handling it only once.

Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#55

Post by awill88 »

As I read this title, for whatever reason, I imagined Walk Out Technology as being some kind of worker’s union SaaS and had to do a double take.

I’m not intending to be unproductively facetious mind you, those types of specialized SaaS offerings that let workers operate and organize and educate should exist, and if AWS ever wanted to spend PR money in the right place… eh? Eh?

Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#56

Post by londons_explore »

ALittleLight wrote: post #8

I've been impressed by the Amazon Go stores. They seem to work pretty well. I'm glad to see Amazon at least trying to spread this technology. I enjoy using it. I do think the palm reading thing will be a potential vulnerability in two regards. First, maybe as a "hack". Is there a way to fake the palm scan? Something you could put on your palm to assume someone else's palm print? If I use this service will I have to b…

"Ship the orgchart".

Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#57

Post by paganel »

vgatherps wrote: post #49
paganel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to be whimsical about it. But, yes, that's par for the course coming from an IT-focused forum, to hell with people in need of low-paying jobs, and we also don't want to speak with them, our lives are way too important for that.

I feel like we should be slightly more ambitious with ensuring the wellbeing of people than keeping around pointless jobs? At the least, if we're stuck on the government ensuring that there are jobs of some sort, it seems like jobs say more actively better the community (say library staff, community center staff, etc) would be much more fulfilling?

> around pointless jobs?

"Pointless jobs" for whom? It definitely puts food on the table for said persons' families, that is definitely not "pointless". Or do you think a lady in her 50s will just hop into any job at her discretion? (no, "community stuff" will just not cut it, you need at least a university diploma for that).

And this comes after those discussions on the tens of thousands of pointless jobs inside FAANG companies, a discussion that we had a few days ago. Jobs which are paid very handsomely, btw.

Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#58

Post by paganel »

sokoloff wrote: post #50
paganel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the usual check-out process? It also creates extra jobs for people that, most probably, would have difficulties finding new ones (some of the lady cashiers at the super-market close to me are well into their 50s). Plus, it forces you to have a little human interaction, that hasn't killed anyone, quite the contrary. More human interactions, even with strangers, less "what pills should I take to make…

“Creates extra jobs” has a pretty direct linkage to “drives higher prices”. If the job is extra/not needed, some consumers will rationally prefer to self-serve (for whatever connotation if that you prefer).

Then those "not needed" will rationally (and in many instance literally) kick those rational consumers in the head, in order to have something to put on the table. It's as simple as that. And then it becomes a race of "let's better fund the police so that we'll keep the not needed at bay" vs "maybe it's just not good policy to kick the not needed while they're down, maybe it's not all their fault".

Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#59

Post by asah »

jsolson wrote: post #27
asah wrote: post #15

Meh - I was excited by JWO but it now looks like self-checkout will win because it works pretty well these days, and it handles all the corner cases including product sold by weight, large items, identical-looking items (common in grocery), etc. With self-checkout, you don't need an account which is crucial for travelers. Self-checkout also supports cash for the unbanked. I've tried SC in multiple countries, just hit…

I can't really fathom how you can include "scan, scan, scan, weight, scan, scan, scan, checkout, touch my credit card, go" in your comment and consider that comparable to "leave." For routine grocery shopping the technology is incredible. That said, I'll grant that it's also creepy AF. The bigger issue for me, though, is that Amazon is so fucking awful at physical retail inventory management (both the selection of it…

The selection is directly tied to the JWO technology which almost by definition gets confused by brands whose product line labels (e.g. flavors) are too similar, which is the common case not the exception. Sure, they have the same price but then the breaks automated reordering from the DC. The only solution is to not carry variations of a product, which then leads to crappy selection. Fine for a convenience store not fine for general purpose grocery.

source: I owned a chain of specialty food retailers as well as a warehouse, and this issue even stymied humans at times!

Re: AWS Just Walk Out Technology

#60

Post by asah »

eightysixfour wrote: post #16
asah wrote: post #15

Meh - I was excited by JWO but it now looks like self-checkout will win because it works pretty well these days, and it handles all the corner cases including product sold by weight, large items, identical-looking items (common in grocery), etc. With self-checkout, you don't need an account which is crucial for travelers. Self-checkout also supports cash for the unbanked. I've tried SC in multiple countries, just hit…

> With self-checkout, you don't need an account which is crucial for travelers. At non-Amazon branded JWO locations you insert a credit card in the machine when you walk in, no account needed. I recently encountered one like this at an airport.

Good point, hasn't seen this but makes sense. Obviously both JWO and SC depend on credit cards being accepted.
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