Customers can take it and leave Ant Financial's unmanned retail "4S store"

Recently, the long-rumored Amazon Go finally opened to the public at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. On the same day, in Hangzhou, the parent company of Alipay, Ant Financial, the parent company of Alipay, also launched its first unmanned experience store WithAnt, which mainly sells Ant Financial peripheral derivative products. The location is in the Z space of its new office building.

Customers can take and leave. Ant Financial’s unmanned retail “4S store” opens

In the WithAnt unmanned experience store, customers can enter the store and browse around after scanning a code with Alipay. If you want to know more about the product details, you can see the relevant information on the LED screen on the wall when you put it on the interactive shelf. The selected products can be put into a box, and after the price is automatically recognized by the sensor, the customer can take it and leave, and the payment will be deducted through Alipay.

Customers can take and leave. Ant Financial’s unmanned retail “4S store” opens

This box is a liftable and sensorless payment terminal. Test data shows that it can accurately identify 50 different items within two seconds.

Ant Financial Technology Laboratory is one of the first teams in China to deploy unmanned retail. The payment gate of the Internet-famous unmanned store "Tao Coffee" in the 2017 Taobao Creation Festival was created by this team. Team leader Lin Feng said that the unmanned store checkout technology launched this time can greatly reduce hardware costs and is suitable for introduction in convenience stores.

"We want to build this store into an unmanned retail '4S store', where all physical stores can find the most suitable unmanned retail technology solutions for them." Therefore, this WithAnt unmanned experience store is also a cutting-edge technology laboratory.

The R&D team is trying to embed sensors in shoes so that customers do not need to scan codes when entering the store. Their identity will be automatically recognized after entering the store, and payment will be automatically settled and deducted when leaving the store. "'Pull out and go' is just one of the solutions for wearable sensorless payment. In the future, when going shopping, you won't need to carry your wallet, not to mention your mobile phone. We are making technical reserves for the future of the Internet of Everything."

Customers can take and leave. Ant Financial’s unmanned retail “4S store” opens

In addition, the most cutting-edge computer vision in sensorless payment technology is also being developed here. Jiang Guofei, vice president of Ant Financial and head of the technology laboratory, said that computer vision will become the mainstream technology direction of unmanned retail in the future, because sensors will increase operating costs and transform the supply chain, and once computer vision matures, it will be promoted on a large scale. .

Customers can take and leave. Ant Financial’s unmanned retail “4S store” opens

Computer vision is just like a driverless car automatically identifying people and objects within the field of view, identifying who took what product, what product was put back in the middle, and how much should be deducted when leaving the store.

Industry observers have pointed out that unmanned retail technology, like cloud computing and artificial intelligence, will rely on platform-level technology giants to conduct research and development and provide overall output to the industry.

"Whether it makes sense to do something mainly depends on whether it can improve efficiency and reduce costs. At present, it seems that the value of unmanned retail technology to physical stores can be realized on both of these points. This is also our motivation." Jiang Guofei said .

It is understood that some physical chain stores are currently introducing Ant Financial’s unmanned retail payment technology solution, which will be implemented in the near future.