The online retailer has opened its Amazon Go concept to the public, selling milk, potato chips and other items typically found at a convenience store.

Amazon employees have been testing the store, which is at the bottom floor of the company’s Seattle headquarters, for about a year.

Shoppers enter the store by scanning the Amazon Go smartphone app at a turnstile, then shop as per usual.

When they pull an item of the shelf, it is added to their virtual cart, and if the item is placed back on the shelf, it is removed from the cart.

Shoppers are charged when they leave the store.

The company said it uses computer vision, machine learning algorithms and sensors to figure out what people are grabbing off its store shelves.

Despite the lack of registers there will be employees at the store — Amazon said there will be people there making food, stocking shelves and helping customers.

Watch here how it’s done:


On the opening day, workers were on hand to help shoppers find and download the Amazon Go app on their phones.

Amazon said families can shop together with just one phone scanning everyone in.

Anything they grab from the shelf will also be added to the tab of the person who signed them in.

But do not help out strangers: Amazon warns that grabbing an item from the shelf for someone else means you will be charged for it.

At about 167 square metres, the store will also sell ready-to-eat breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

Items from the US Whole Foods 365 brand are also stocked, such as cookies, popcorn and dried fruit.

The company had announced the Amazon Go store in December 2016 and said it would open by early 2017, but it delayed the debut while it worked on the technology and company employees tested it out.

The public opening is another sign that Amazon is serious about expanding its physical presence.

It has opened more than a dozen bookstores, taken over space in some US department stores and bought Whole Foods last year, giving it 470 grocery stores.

Source: www.abc.net.au