Five years ago Amazon started working on a secret project: how to eliminate the checkout line in stores. Amazon executives reasoned that most other aspects of physical shopping had been pretty much perfected, except for one thing — nobody likes waiting in line.
The result of that project is Amazon Go, a futuristic convenience store in which shoppers are tracked by hundreds of cameras on the ceiling and a computer algorithm that analyses their every gesture, and then tallies up their receipt when they exit. Amazon calls this “just walk out” shopping, because there is no checkout counter and no checkout line, just a few turnstiles like those on the underground.
The store, which has been in testing since December 2016 and opens to the public on Monday, represents Amazon’s most provocative effort yet to reshape the future of brick-and-mortar retail.
