[inkaudio]

There are number of tech companies directly competing in this space:

https://standard.ai/

https://grabango.com/

https://www.getzippin.com/

https://www.v7labs.com/retail

https://www.getzippin.com/

There are competitive options, if you’re in retail you do not have to give Amazon all your “retail data” or use their tech.

[Animats]

Do any of those companies actually have a live customer? Not a demo store, a real paying customer with more than one location live?

Standard.ai apparently has a demo store in SF, although it's been closed due to the coronavirus epidemic.

Grabango - one installation in test at a Giant Eagle store.

Getzippin - one installation in test at a Lojas Americanas store. Their site gives the impression that it's really about getting people to install their phone app, so they can be spied upon.

v7labs - we're AI, we don't need installations.

[HUSSTECH]

https://www.thirdeyelabs.com/ - real customers - real money - multiple-sites Plus they beat Amazon to this concept by a good few months. https://www.thirdeyelabs.com/news. Granted all the focus/attention in this space is in the US. But it is happening elsewhere too.

[StrictDabbler]

"Beat them to this concept"? I can't even remember the first time I heard about this idea. 2003? 1995? I half-suspect I read about the idea in OMNI Magazine.

It's always been a question of when the supporting technology was going to be good enough to make it work. The idea has been around long enough for most of the early patents to expire.

[HUSSTECH]

> It's always been a question of when the supporting technology was going to be good enough to make it work.

Yep, I meant more along the lines of how you put it i.e. packaged up and ready to start selling it as a boxed-up/drop-in solution.

[perl4ever]

IBM had a commercial years ago, probably intended to be based on RFIDs, but same concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvHK40N87mE

[onefuncman]

Qualcomm's spinout Gimbal went broke once so far trying to bring this tech to market, but they're still muddling along.

[Animats]

Found a Grabango video.[1] They did a test for NCR.

[1] https://vimeo.com/352588185

[exikyut]

Wow, I have no idea why but this is 404ing. IA can't tell me what the title was either.

[arcadeparade]

Reminds me of this old IBM ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFhBGKU6HA

[tmilard]

Yes, IBM "thinks" the future. Other companies build them.

Conclusion : ideas are worthless, Execution is key

[Klinky]

>Conclusion : ideas are worthless, Execution is key

This was also often the conclusion found during the Dark Ages. ;D

[krthr]

Hahahaha Spanish Inquisition likes this

[Naracion]

May I suggest a rephrasing for that?

Execution can bring profit. Ideas might not.

History is full of examples of visionaries coming up with ideas that have inspired and fueled others--in some cases whole industries have been founded on these ideas. For instance, Doug Engelbart gave the "Mother of All Demos" in 1968 [1]. It was a proof of concept, but the ideas he talked about were implemented by other companies--who profited from it.

It is unfortunate that we live in a world where ideas hold such little monetary value, but they're most certainly not worthless.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY&t=4s

[ct520]

I dunno, makes sense to me. Your idea is worthless to ones self (monetary) if you do not leverage/execute it.

[petra]

Of course you need both execution and ideas.

But let's say you have very good ideas but you're a mediocre executioner.

1. Could you find a very lucrative job/partnership mostly because of your ideas, and get quality help with the execution ? It's possible.

2. Ideas are easy to steal. Do you have a decent strategy to prevent that from happening ? Those sometimes exist.

3. Not every business sucseeds. Can you try repeatedly ? Maybe, depending on context.

[blowski]

"Ideas are unlikely to have any immediate monetary value until they are executed" is more accurate, but doesn't roll off the tongue so easily.

[m463]

AT&T had advertisements that said "You Will"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will

I was always confused as to why they'd spend money on vaporware advertising, since I don't think they were responsible for doing any of the things.

[philwelch]

Bell Labs was responsible for much of the underlying technology, and these applications had been foreseen. But they were undoubtedly deluded about their ability to deliver those applications.

[TheOtherHobbes]

"Branding"

I get why they spent money on vaporware advertising.

But I don't get why there's no modern equivalent. No one seems to be making equivalent statements about technology that's 20-30 years away from today.

There are vague hints that AI and QC will somehow be awesome, but they're very light on specifics.

It's interesting how we got from the forward-looking 90s to the backward-looking 20s.

[gibolt]

To be fair, many of those came to fruition over AT&T's network, until you hit your monthly data and FAX cap

[mdonahoe]

Directed by David Fincher!

[jp555]

And in what universe is great execution devoid of ideas?

Do you mean to say that doing something well is way better than imagining doing something well?

[Rantenki]

Doing something well means you already imagined doing something well first. Or, in other words, "imagining doing something well" is necessary, but not sufficient to actually do something well.

[Naracion]

Coming up with an idea for something, and then sharing this idea with other people in an open manner, can plant the seed that germinates the execution for that idea.

To me, that's part of the reason why thought pieces are valuable to me. Also, unconventional tracks at academic conferences, like provocations at DIS 2020 [1] (which I cite here since it's on my mind because I'm personally applying to it right now).

[1]: http://dis.acm.org/2020/provocations.html

[jdc]

I mean, you're not wrong, but at the same time whether you call it "imagining" or "coming up with ideas", if done well the results of said process are valuable.

Ie. Good ideas are valuable

[necovek]

One should also consider that good ideas usually come out of having a lot of domain knowledge in a particular area. And that requires effort and work ("execution" but in the past).

[pixmin]

https://www.pixevia.com

At PIXEVIA we develop the technology and run a fully working convenience store in Europe.

[jeffleft]

Another one: https://www.accelrobotics.com/

[Animats]

That store looks like a render.

There are some fully automated stores the size of shipping containers in Beijing, but they're mostly demos, too.

I don't think anybody really has this working well enough to deploy. It has that machine learning "we got to 95%" look. This is something that's easy to almost do, and the last 5% is really tough.

[ehsankia]

nit: You posted getzippin twice

I do love how the very first banner video standard.ai shows is how one person passes an item to another. I'm curious to see all the edge cases Amazon Go ran into over the year or two they ran. I can see a lot of messy cases like that coming up.

[thundergolfer]

Another one is https://black.ai/

All the way down in Australia.

[Animats]

They're so cool they don't even have a demo or a video But they can do a large-scale store installation in just days, they claim.

[aetherspawn]

I knew the founder of this one in high school.

[mzanchi]

From Brazil, Beholder: https://beholder.tech/en/

Although not yet doing automatic checkout, but most of the technology needed for it is there.

[asymptotically2]

There are also existing cashierless stores in China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QKrHi-G9WQ

[amelius]

What are the false-positive/negative rates of this technology?

What if I grab two items with one hand, and then put one back? Will the system correctly track this?

[dokem]

I think there is an argument to be made of an acceptable increase in false negatives as the cost can be recouped through the efficiency of the system. Not to mention that a system like this should also cut down on theft.

[amelius]

I don't think so, because people will figure out the weak spots and share this information. It will become a sport and people will think "last time I grabbed the milk like this, and they didn't charge me for it, what if I do it again tomorrow?" Hackers will start wearing special clothes with dazzle patterns or with grocery items to fool the system, etc.

[dokem]

What you're describing is no different than the thief mentality that exists today. Most people don't care to steal a carton of milk just because they can. And there's no denying the cost effectiveness of removing your checkout staff or else this tech wouldn't exist.

[amelius]

The difference is that with this kind of stealing the people doing it are not accountable.

[freepor]

But Amazon is going to be the easiest to integrate, which is where Amazon will start, then use the data advantage to improve their product further.