Amazon Go Heads to the UK

Amazon has opened the world’s most advanced grocery store in Ealing, London this week. The grocery store is the first of its kind with no physical cashiers or checkout process. It is literally “walk out the store” grocery shopping. No wallets or cash are necessary. What lines ??? It’s grab and go! It’s the right grocery store for the folks who have little patience.

Once inside the store, the shopper will only need a smartphone with an Amazon Go app installed. When the user signs into their Amazon account and scans it upon entry, they will be able to shop freely inside. Amazon uses sensor fusion technology to track the moves of customers and computer vision and algorithms to help with payment and its contactless checkout experience. No matter what a customer picks up in the store, the sensors are all around. It’s even on the grocery store’s ceilings. The app will add the item to the shopper’s “electronic cart” when the item is picked up in the store. If a shopper puts an item back, the sensors are intelligent enough to know. Once the shopper leaves the store with their items, they’ll be sent an e-receipt in app.

Amazon Go first opened its cashierless grocery stores in the state of Washington where its headquarters resides. The corporations expanded its Amazon Go locations in California and New York. The first locations opened in Seattle in 2018 and they’ve steadily added more locations across the country. Now they are expanding to Europe.

Amazon is always thinking ahead of the game. They invented a contactless, cashierless grocery store at a time when buzz words such as “contactless” were practically unheard of. Post pandemic, the idea of a contactless grocery store that uses sensors and motions to help individuals purchase groceries is a very bright and necessary one. It surely is the grocery store of the future.