Take a look inside Amazon's futuristic new store, which promises no checkout lines and tracks your purchases with high-tech sensors

pulse

January 23, 2018 12:18 AM

Amazon Go is Amazon's new store of the future. Here's what it's like to shop there.

The store uses cameras and sensors to track what shoppers take from the shelves, so they can just walk out without stopping to check out.

Amazon Go is finally here.

The store featuring Amazon's "just walk out" technology finally opened to the public on Monday, following a lengthy delay. Located in Seattle near Amazon's campus, it's seen as the future of brick-and-mortar shopping, with complicated technology that's designed to make in-store shopping as seamless and easy as shopping on Amazon.com.

Here's what it's like to shop at the new store.

Amazon Go opened to the public on Monday, January 22.

It might be the first store in the country that actually requires customers to have an app downloaded to their phones. To enter, you must scan the Amazon Go app's bar code at the turnstiles. From that moment, cameras and sensors identify you by your Amazon account as you move through the store.

Moving through the store, the stock is much like any other convenience store. Prepared foods are offered along with meal kits, non-perishable and perishable groceries, and a small selection of beer and wine.

The store doesn't have cashiers, but it still has workers. Greeters welcome shoppers into the store, and stockers shuffle goods from the back rooms onto the shelves. For the liquor purchases, a worker checks IDs.

People were excited at the store's opening.

How does Amazon manage to have a store without cashiers? Shoppers need only look up to find out the answer. A complicated array of technology tracks every move within the store.

Dozens of cameras work conjointly with sensors in the shelves to track when shoppers pick up or put down an item.

Don't take anything off the shelf to hand it to someone else to buy. Unless you're both synced to the same Amazon account, the system will charge the grabber. You grab it, you buy it — those are the rules.

The first day of Amazon Go seems to have been a success so far, as lines appeared outside, circling around the block. Amazon has been mum on its plans for Amazon Go and the tech inside, but we're willing to bet it won't stay limited to this one Seattle store for long.

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