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Microsoft is Working on Technology That Would Eliminate Cashiers and Checkout Lines From Stores, Says Report (reuters.com)
Microsoft is working on technology that would eliminate cashiers and checkout lines from stores, in a nascent challenge to Amazon.com's automated grocery shop, Reuters reported, citing six people familiar with the matter. From the report: The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is developing systems that track what shoppers add to their carts, the people say. Microsoft has shown sample technology to retailers from around the world and has had talks with Walmart about a potential collaboration, three of the people said. Microsoft's technology aims to help retailers keep pace with Amazon Go, a highly automated store that opened to the public in Seattle in January. Amazon customers scan their smartphones at a turnstile to enter. Cameras and sensors identify what they remove from the shelves. When customers are finished shopping, they simply leave the store and Amazon bills their credit cards on file. Amazon Go, which will soon open in Chicago and San Francisco, has sent rivals scrambling to prepare for yet another disruption by the world's biggest online retailer. Some have tested programs where customers scan and bag each item as they shop, with mixed results.
Don't mind me, just walking in and out with nothing but physical money to pay for my goods.
And It Is Employeed At Its Whole Foods Brand Stores.
Your editors are too STUPID and YOUNG to realize this. Fail, Miss Mash. Fail, Beau.
I don't know who Microsoft think they are. First the murky telemetry in Windows 10 that cannot be switched off. Then Microsoft Office becomes a cloud only tool. Next, Microsoft's CEO is pushing all sorts of "YOU OWN NOTHING" cloud crap - your games, apps, software all go cloud-only. And now I go to a bricks-and-mortar store and Microshaft of all companies tracks what I'm putting in my shopping cart? F you, Microsoft. Privacy invaders. Data thieves. Conscience free arm-twisters. Cleptomaniacs. I am not shopping at ANY store that has the Microsoft system in it.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
How about solving problems that actually exist? We already have "self checkouts". Is that a major problem that needs addressing?
Sure let's put more lower educated people out of work. Why not, heck WalMart has already eliminated half their human checkouts for self check. So why not just put them all out of work? Pretty soon we will have robots stocking shelves too.
Add item to cart
Remove item from card
Re-Add item to cart
System Crash
99999 Cans Campbell soup @ 99.99
-1 Box cereal @ 9.99
33333.3333g grapes @ 9.99/kg
Your total: $3849784.34
Properly calculated by Intel, Verified by MSFT.
One more way for Walmart to not pay employees...
CyberKender
Apparently Appointed Lord Mayor of There
So customer takes two items off the shelf together, scans one, and puts them in their bag. Super difficult to catch.
Put a RFID tag with a UUID on every package that comes into the store. Sign customers in via various and/or appropriate methods, whether their phone or just an RFID sticker they can place on something else in their wallet. Scan customers aggressively on their way out, perhaps making them walk a circuitous path to enhance scan time and opportunity. Perform inventory scans frequently; since you can do them by just walking around, they can actually be done continually.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Microsoft is merely a Spy Apprentice. If you want to know the secrets of a true Spy Master, head over to Spybook.
Cashiers rank among the top jobs in the US by numbers employed. Is Microsoft also working on technology that will eliminate the problems they're planning on creating when they make millions of jobs obsolete? Not to mention the fact that a lot of consumer spending and business revenue depends on millions of people being employable.
Once again, Greed is doing what Greed does best; doing whatever it takes to create revenue quickly without giving two shits about any long term impact.
Remember the whole "we rich companies are job creators" meme. Microsoft has billions in the bank. It should be giving people jobs not trying to take them away. I hope any Micromarts that pop up get vandalized.
I pay for things with cash. If a business doesn't take cash, they don't get my business.
I don't respond to AC's.
We have had it in the UK for at least a decade. A supermarket called Waitrose allows you to take a hand scanner and scan your stuff as you put it in your trolley. They are still doing it so the fraud must be at an acceptable level, as with self-service checkouts.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"I am not shopping at ANY store that has the Microsoft system in it"
I hate to break the bad news to you mate, but you won't be shopping anywhere then. 99.9% of point of sale front end systems (known as tills to non geeks) are microsoft windows based and have been for decades. Before that it was DOS with the occasional OS/2 based system. The backend could be linux or something else non windows, but tills almost exclusively run Windows.
This is Microsoft talking about, so look forward to randomly not being charged for your purchases up until about version 3.
Unfortunately, you'll also sometimes be double-charged for things, too.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Cashiers rank among the top jobs in the US by numbers employed.
when will they do something about that goddamned water so it doesn't run downhill all the time
you are just bitching, ignorant fool
Desperate Microsoft who sees Cortana being ignored and Azure not attracting cloud business in talks with Wal Mart who sees Amazon eroding their market and leaving them mostly as the butt of jokes as the place where the strange dregs of society shop.
I'd like to see the negotiation between them. Microsoft enforcing ridiculous licensing and Azure rates, Wal Mart tell them the new deal is half of whatever Microsoft wants to charge and half-off again next year.
Can we work on eliminating shoppers from the stores? They're the real problems.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
like buying meat and produce by the pound? Or taking stuff out out of place?
The Running Man, here we come!
except maybe in the ultra high end where you're paying so you can tell the girl you're dating there's a real chef. Heck, we've already replaced most Sports & Finance writers with algorithms.
I keep saying this, but we're heading for another industry revolution, and there was 70 years of unemployment, poverty, social strife and wars after the last one that didn't end until new tech caught up with new jobs. It's easy to destroy something, it's harder to create. Jobs are the same way.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So J Random Doofus picks up item A then later on decides that item B is better, and so puts item A back in the wrong place. Doubles my shopping time because I have to double-check that what I've picked up is actually what the label on the shelf says it is. If MS can solve this one (maybe by giving JRD a shock at the time) I'll sign up.
Garry Knight
The items tend to be a bit pricy:
https://thetab.com/uk/2017/08/...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Please reinstall Windows 10 to complete transaction. Pending charges will remain until installation is completed . . .
Didn't RTFA or even RFTS but it's teh MiKKKRO$OFT so therefore bad!
Didn't I see where Amazon was already testing similar technology in some test brick and mortar stores sometime earlier this year? It identifies you when you walk in, what you pick up, and automatically charges you when you walk out. The tests were limited to Amazon employees. Not sure if they expanded it to the general populace yet.
..more tracking, more data-mining of personal information, and since it's inherently 'cashless', more opportunities for data breaches stealing your payment information and identity information. Fuck that, fuck Microsoft, fuck 'cashless', fuck having every aspect of our lives 24/7/365 cradle-to-grave surveilled, logged, tracked, analyzed, scrutinized, and monetized. Get the FUCK out of our lives.
Still needs ID checkers!
>Microsoft is Working on Technology That Would Eliminate Cashiers and Checkout Lines From Stores, Says Report
I think they already mastered that one years ago and tested out in their own stores.
Did anyone see any lines for brown Zunes for example?
This isn't the same thing. You don't 'scan' anything. You come in, you take some things and put them into your bag, and you walk out.
The premise - at least at the Amazon Go store - is that you must first identify yourself to the store ( using your Amazon account ) and it then tracks you as you move through the store using machine vision. A combination of machine vision and shelf sensors watches as you pick stuff up and adds it to your virtual cart.
By the time you are ready to leave the store your virtual cart is full - you can optionally check it on your phone - and you then simply walk out and Amazon charges you in the same manner as they would for an online order.
his isn't the same thing. You don't 'scan' anything. You come in, you take some things and put them into your bag, and you walk out.
The premise - at least at the Amazon Go store - is that you must first identify yourself to the store ( using your Amazon account ) and it then tracks you as you move through the store using machine vision. A combination of machine vision and shelf sensors watches as you pick stuff up and adds it to your virtual cart.
By the time you are ready to leave the store your virtual cart is full - you can optionally check it on your phone - and you then simply walk out and Amazon charges you in the same manner as they would for an online order.
This is an idea as old as RFID tags! Seriously, when RFID first came out, this is what they said it would be used for.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Just look at the post frequency of stories trying to push microsoft goods/services/don't judge us by our past judge us by what we do now crap.
You can't buy my love microsoft. No matter how much you pay or how many companies you buy.
Well, that would not seem wise, to be voluntarily shutting yourself off from a large amount of potential business, just to not take cash.
That depends heavily on what you are selling and who you are selling it to. I guarantee the Apple Store isn't doing a lot of cash transactions. Amazon seems to be doing alright and the vast majority of what they sell doesn't involve paper money at all. Other companies like McDonalds or Walmart do rather a lot of cash business. Cash isn't inherently good or bad but companies shouldn't be obligated to handle it if it reduces their profits.
And hey, not everyone has a smartphone, you know?
No but the number of people who do is a huge number - presently around 77% of Americans. It's plausible that the money saved by not having to handle cash more than makes up for the lost customers. Honestly I don't know anyone in my personal life who dogmatically uses cash. Most I know use it when they have to but don't prefer it.
I have plenty of credit...I could use, but I also would rather buy with cash and not have my purchases associated with my identity as much as possible.
That's fine as long as you recognize that the vendors are under no obligation to sell to you if they prefer to be paid with credit cards or some other form of payment. I think you are being a little paranoid but I understand valuing privacy and respect the impulse.
I"m certainly not alone with wanting to use cash for one of any number of valid reasons, and I can't imagine a business wanting to bar itself from a large amount of potential revenue.
It's not about the amount of revenue. It's about the amount of PROFIT. Not all revenue generates equal profits. Cash transactions tend to be small in value so you need a lot of them to make handling cash worthwhile. Many businesses fit this profile but many others do not. For my company cash would be a LOT more hassle than checks or credit cards since most of our transactions with our customers are thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars.
Microsoft is not in the business of data mining.
Bullshit they aren't. Bing gets its revenue from ads. Linked-In gets lots of money from data mining. Microsoft sells data mining tools. Your faith in Microsoft on this topic is wildly incorrect.
How about solving problems that actually exist? We already have "self checkouts". Is that a major problem that needs addressing?
Yes it is a major problem because it's a major cost for retailers. Most retailers have fairly thin margins and anything they can do to reduce headcount and other costs in the checkout process is something worth considering. There is NOTHING value added about the checkout process. It's necessary but it does not add value to the customer or the product. If anything it makes the shopping experience notably less pleasant. It's a cost center for the retailer which they would happily get rid of if they could.
Sort of . $149.99 (one-time purchase) gets you Office Home & Student 2016 for Win7 and later, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote but doesn't include Outlook or Access.
Cashiers rank among the top jobs in the US by numbers employed.
It is true that a lot of people are employed as cashiers. This is unfortunate because the job of cashier is not a value added job. It doesn't make the product better, it doesn't improve the shopping experience, and it's a large cost to both the retailer and the customer.
Is Microsoft also working on technology that will eliminate the problems they're planning on creating when they make millions of jobs obsolete?
No and nor should they. You're typing this on a computer and you don't see the irony in your argument? Should Microsoft have been subsidizing Smith Corona typewriters because PCs reduced the need for clerical staff? Should Ford have been worrying about what happened to people who ride horses? The job of cashier adds NO value. It's necessary to ensure the transaction takes place but it doesn't benefit the customer or the retailer and it certainly should not be maintained as a jobs program if we can do away with that task. All it does is add cost to the transaction for everyone involved. That is not a job worth protecting.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of consumer spending and business revenue depends on millions of people being employable.
They remain employable - they'll just be doing something else.
They do that in several supermarkets in Belgium. Double winner, because people must use a storecard, so they can see you buying habbits and they can fire some people.
Fraud it defeated by checking people at random. Toomuch failure and you probably are nit allowed to use it anymore.
I do not use it sopeople keep their job and my data is more valuable than my time. And the more vallue my time is, the more my data is valuable.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yeah. The premise is great! But seeing as we're a mostly "service based" economy now, what's the consequences when we only need to hire a fraction of the people currently working *IN* services?
I pay for things with cash. If a business doesn't take cash, they don't get my business.
Really? You never write a check? Never use a credit or debit card? You make your house payment in cash? Pay your utilities in cash? You purchased your PC in cash?
Yeah I don't believe you are telling the truth. If you are then I kind of pity you.
>so the fraud must be at an acceptable level, as with self-service checkouts.
Huh, no wonder. Waitrose uses Gestapo lever intimidation tactics against accused shoplifters:
Handcuffed in Waitrose: the innocent man in search of justice
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/26/innocent-man-handcuffed-waitrose-mistaken-identity-nightmare-christopher-seddon
They seized me, then handcuffed me with my arms behind my back, stating that they were arresting me on suspicion of shoplifting 17 days earlier, in spite of the fact that on that day I hadn’t even been in Chesham. The security guard thrust a mobile phone in my face [with a CCTV still on it] and screamed ‘do you deny this is you?’ at me. All this was going on in front of dozens of shoppers.”
He says he was not allowed to call his mother, who he knew would be distressed when he inexplicably failed to return.
What a lovely place to shop.
What if you're coming in with multiple people, like, say, a mother with her 3 kids? the mother signs in with her prime account, but her kids don't. If the kids take items off the shelf and puts them in mom's bag, does an alarm go off? Are they apprehended by store security if they leave? Or is the "machine vision" smart enough to charge the items to mom's account?
I am not sure I understand how this would be different from the Sam's Club 'Scan and Go' app I used the other day. I scanned each item (who really needs a 2 gallon jar of mayo??) and put it in my cart. When I was done, I told it to pay with my credit card and it generated a upc code and a receipt. The person at the door looked at the receipt, scanned the code and I was gone. No waiting in line. Yes, there is the risk of putting an item in you cart without scanning. I would assume that if you are buying an iPad or other expensive item (that could possibly be hidden) they would do something like 'Hey, let me scan that for you to make sure it comes up with the correct price."
Per my other post....I've yet to see in the US, a non-cash business in meatspace.
Yes you have but I think you mean retailers. Most (though not all) retailers accept cash but many other businesses do not as a general practice and the number is increasing. Heck my company pretty much never deals in cash. We could in principle but it would be wildly inconvenient and cost a lot more because we aren't a retailer.
It may take over..but I don't see it going fully that way in my lifetime.
I would agree with that though I do think you will see increasing numbers of businesses that find cash to not be worth the bother. It really comes down to whether the increased revenue and profits offsets the added cost of handling the cash. For most businesses it does but not all. But if companies could do away with checkout counters and their costs in exchange for not handling cash anymore I think some of them will take the plunge.
I tend to think this move, so far, is mostly outside the US, I mean, we still write and take checks here.....you know? While that isn't exactly cash, it is cash equivalent and doesn't require a network connection to accept and deposit.
Writing checks sort of speaks to how backwards our system is here in the US. And yes checks do require a network connection at some point albeit not necessarily at the point of sale. Many retailers will not accept them unless they can verify them electronically. Frankly checks are hugely annoying and expensive to the retailer. Younger people tend to use a lot less of them. I can't remember the last time I saw someone under the age of 50 using a check at the grocery store.
What's wrong with that steak?!
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
at the self checkout lanes. You can still pay with cash.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yeah. The premise is great! But seeing as we're a mostly "service based" economy now, what's the consequences when we only need to hire a fraction of the people currently working *IN* services?
They move on to new services, which people can now afford because other things are cheaper. There are successful startups now for (internet shopping-style) lawn mowing, car washing, dry cleaner pick-up/delivery, all sorts of recurring business like that. Stuff you could easily do yourself, but hey, if it's cheap enough, why not have someone else do it?
As with every historical displacement of workers, new jobs are created because the middle class can afford more, normally goods or services that only the rich could afford before. There are lots of well-funded start-ups getting investor attention right now for just such services. Guess what will be popular and make your own millions from your start-up.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Amazon Go is actually in the real world today, learning what works and where the edge cases are.
No amount of planning or thought process or technology will make a working system, until Microsoft has some trial stores up and operating like Go does, I don't think they are a very serious contender in this space.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
they can free in store ones to rent like the self scan stores.
Remember when we starting putting RFID tags in everything? The promise was that you could roll a shopping cart through a reader and the contents of the entire cart would be scanned at once. That was before we had NFC payment systems.
What ever happened? I have yet to see a retailer that can scan more than an item at a time, manually, in spite of this technology forecast being decades old.
cash what about WIC, food stamps, EBT?
I already avoid the Self Checkout Lanes like the Plague that they are.
Any store that tries this will loose me as even a potential customer.
No sense in going to a store that will likely be having me stock the shelves as I browse next.
Frankly, I can easily see Amazon buying out a Goliath like Walmart, and having a fleet of delivery drones, small cars and vans, with minimal store staff, and a discount option of "pick it yourself" for keeping the Brick and Mortar part of the store open to the people that just have to see an item before they purchase.
'Nuf Sed.
studen loans with no bankruptcy, trades being push down by schools, and to many jobs that want an college degree but then say people with college degrees don't have the right skills.
The impact of this tech is always exaggerated.
Basically, they are just saying they can automate check out at 7-11 and other convenience stores and delis.
Meanwhile, people like me will continue to pay with cash and if you automate my checkout, you lose me as a customer.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Speaking of Amazon Go, where is the big story about how wonderful and fantastic it is? Still working out the kinks, I suppose. Not a big success, I suppose.
They should go ahead and also eliminate the concept of money, finally getting us to a star-trek like society where no one is either hungry or homeless !
Microsoft needs to get rid of customers too...it needs only corporates...
We have the exact same thing in the US, only we put things in carts instead of trolleys. That's not what the article is about.
Loss of jobs and human dynamics.
I work with computers all day. When I shop, I avoid yet another interaction with a machine. Don't like automated voice when I call customer support or billing either.
It's not just the loss of human interaction, in both cases, the data exchange rate with machines is too low.
It's ridiculous how concerned people are about eliminating the most horridly unpleasant jobs in a time of historically low unemployment. Get rid of those supermarket checker jobs nobody actually enjoys and either the freed labor will go to something more pleasant or -- in your nightmare scenario which there's no evidence of whatsoever in all of history and so much evidence against in the present -- we can all work 30 hours weeks to share the miraculously decreased need for work.
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Yes. Glad I'm not the only one that has noticed, your editors are TOO YOUNG. It exists in supermarkets, too. And guess what? They still have a ton of employees on the floor. Sigh. I miss the good Slashdot.
They move on to new services, which people can now afford because other things are cheaper.
It depends on the rate of change. If enough people lose their jobs in short order you end up with a depression, and people aren't spending anything on cheaper stuff because they are broke.
It may sound odd to you, but I've met people who have enjoyed working on checkouts.
30 hour weeks for everyone is unlikely, as 40 hour weeks for some, and 0 hours for some is cheaper for firms, at least at any given point in time, even if overall 30 hours for everyone might lead to a better economy.
>>Microsoft is Working on Technology That Would Eliminate Cashiers and Checkout Lines From Stores, Says Report
Yeah. The report doesn't say it also eliminates customers from the stores.
Perhaps they try to sell windows phones, and transform the surrounding of these stores into a Ghosttown.
aaaaaaa
>>You come in, you take some things and put them into your bag, and you walk out.
Works for me.
Then some cashiers with strange uniforms and weapons come and put you down on the floor before taking you to the nearest prison.
aaaaaaa
So, what happens when a customer changes their mind and removes an item from their cart and leaves it on a shelf - not necessarily the shelf it came from?
What if a customer wants to pay with cash?
What if a customer wants to pay with a credit card not on file with Amazon (or whoever).
What if a customer needs to do separate transactions for some items?
What if a customer is shopping and they get a text from someone, say an emergency, and they have to leave the store and they just leave the filled cart behind?
I could go on and on and on... Are computers really capable of being programmed to handle every possible scenario?
Is Microsoft also working on technology that will eliminate the problems they're planning on creating when they make millions of jobs obsolete?
We already have the necessary technology. You split the people into two groups and give them shovels. The first group digs holes and the second group fills them back in.
They add plenty of value. I don't work for Walmart. I'm not checking out my own products. I'm the asshole that makes them open a line or I leave 3 buggies of stuff thawing out in the middle of the floor. How much money did they "save" then?
We have those, and have had them for some years.
In both supermarkets and department stores.
I detest and avoid them.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I pay for things with my check card. If a business doesn't take my check card, they don't get my business.
I refused to pay my water bill to our water co-op (Hillsville Utility District) for over a year because they wouldn't take a card. They wanted me to mail in a CHECK or drive down to pay cash. What kind of 80s bullshit is that? Every time they cut my water off, I walked my happy ass outside and turned it back on. When they wanted to get bitchy about that citing laws and other such nonsense threatening to sue, I gave them the business card of my lawyer and told em to bring it. They never brought it.
This customer is always right...and is an asshole.
Our Nespresso shops already do most of this. You walk in, grab a paper bag, then place all the covfefe sleeves you want into the bag. Then you put the bag in a scanner bin which reads the RFID info on each sleeve and tells you how much you will pay. Then you swipe or tap your smartcard, get a receipt printed out and walk out. Obviously, the next step is to have your phone recognised as you walk in, and an app automatically activates which informs you how much your're buying. Once you walk out of the store, your purchase is registered and your account is debited. The receipt appears as an SMS. You might probably have to scan each sleeve to make sure you're buying your own items and not the person near you.
The consequences are simple... people will either have to create new jobs based on vanity as we'll cover necessity. Or we'll have to work towards some form of communism.
There is such a thing as an "eye brow plucking shop"... no shit... it exists.. they're all over and they exist because we ran out of jobs that meet the needs of the people and now we focus instead on making people into social workers for the elderly and unemployed.
The cashiers that this technology replaces will become the new loss-prevention personnel.
I already designed and setup this very type of system. I demoed it to Wal-Mart about 10 years ago. They thought it was too-far ahead of its time, customers would not like it, and were not interested at that time. Time to dust off paperwork. Microsoft and/or Wal-Mart better not be stealing what I showed them!
i would make mistakes every single time
well i already do them anyway, everytime i have to press a button with the prince in a bag of the same kinds of fruits, for some reason i always make the mistake and select the cheapest one, its great because its just a mistake, I like people working in my stores, less mistakes that way
"Rent" - sounds like a money grubbers wet dream. I'm sure you don't mean "rent" as in you pay to use this, but more or less, "rent" as in, you borrow this, but be assured, some business is going to make people pay for the usage.
unless you ban technology this is inevitable ... the only solution is to stop breeding or to actually colonize space ... but if i were evil as "them" i'd derive some pleasure from seeing all those "hard workers" going down into a zone theyve never been before . I'd almost say
KARMA'S A BITCH BITCH
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Have fun with that.
I'll enjoy my 2 months of interest free time to pay before the bills hit my high interest savings or brokerage accounts. 1 year of extended warranty and 2% - 30% of all my purchases going towards my next vacation
Plus I can honestly tell panhandlers and shady cab drivers that I have no cash.
Plus I have my cache of anonymous gift cards for when I want anonymity.
The interest I make between putting a purchase on my credit card to the time that it actually gets paid out of my assets is about 140 dollars a year for literally nothing. The credit card rewards I make are thousands of dollars a year.
What exactly is it that you're getting from paying with cash?