Amazon customised retail environments

This new patent application from Amazon looks at what’s next for Amazon’s convenience stores – namely, enabling people to order customisable items while still not requiring manual checkout.

Examples of customisable items in a retail store include: a deli section making made-to-order sandwiches; a butcher offering customisable meat selections; a coffee counter; and more.

In order to track the items being ordered by someone, Amazon imagines using an order kiosk where users can order a customisable item (e.g. a cheeseburger with extra fries). Through a combination of using cameras and floor weight sensor data, this order will be added to the user’s virtual cart. As they then proceed to maybe pick up other items from the shelves, overhead cameras and sensors will add these additional items to that user’s cart.

Secondly, perhaps Amazon is building an automated checkout infrastructure that can power existing retailers – an AWS for the physical commerce world. The advantage of doing this is that Amazon also captures purchasing data, user preferences, and physical identities of things that people buy outside of Amazon.