Sounds like the sort of thing you can sink a lot of money into, to me.
Amazon’s still in the process of getting their grocery store, Amazon Go, to work right. And, I guess they figured testing the cameras was an important task. Because three of their employees dressed up as Pikachu to test them. According to Bloomberg:
Employees have tried to fool the technology. One day, three enterprising Amazonians donned bright yellow Pikachu costumes and cruised around grabbing sandwiches, drinks and snacks. The algorithms nailed it, according to a person familiar with the situation, correctly identifying the employees and charging their Amazon accounts, even though they were obscured behind yellow polyester.
Not like that really means anything. Most of the technology there involves your phone (presumably logged into Amazon), not your face. As a matter of fact, all those buzzwords they toss at you are clearly having a bit of trouble with things that aren’t a problem in a normal grocery store:
The system is working well for individual shoppers but still struggles to accurately charge people who are moving around in groups, such as families with grabby kids, the person says. Go engineers have been studying families shopping together and are tweaking their sensors to recognize when a child eats an item while wandering around the store. Engineers are also figuring out which person to charge when a couple goes shopping together. Amazon has encouraged employees to enter the store in pairs and buy lunch.
You know, good luck with that, guys. I’d argue their vision of the future is a little bit further flung than they’d care to admit, though.
About Author
