Wal-Mart’s (NYSE:WMT) Code Eight, which is the company’s startup incubator, is testing personal shopping services for moms in NYC. It will be used for the busy mom to get product recommendations and they will be able to buy them via text message. This specific service will be geared more towards beauty, household, health and apparel products.
Another project of Code Eight is geared towards a different vision for their stores. Project Kepler will use similar “computer vision” technology to that of Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Go Store. This new high tech technology tracks and charges a customer’s purchases without the need for a traditional cashier. The team at Code Eight has yet to disclose very many details on this project but what they’ve announced so far sounds very similar to the Amazon store.
The one and only Amazon Go Store was launched back in December of 2016, in Seattle. Using computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning algorithms, customers are able to purchase products without using a cashier or a check out station.
The main issue that has halted them from opening the one thousand stores that they hope to one day roll out is that the sensors that they currently use are only able to process a certain amount of users and objects at a time. If the store were to be crowded enough, the company has found its technology is currently not able to keep up with the high volume.
What remains unknown is if the Wal-Mart startup incubator has developed a more advanced prototype to that of Amazon’s. Currently, Wal-Mart has over 6,300 stores worldwide and like many other grocery stores within the last ten years, has implemented faster self check-out registers. A single Wal-Mart store has hundreds, if not thousands of customers in a day and for it to be completely cashier-free would take monstrous technology.
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