Head to our newest Electric Forecourt® and you’ll find the very best of electric vehicle charging, the latest electric cars and, for the first time ever, the future of retail shopping.
Yes, that’s right, the London Gatwick Electric Forecourt® is home to a Little Fresh convenience store, powered by Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology.
That doesn’t mean we’re encouraging shoplifting but rather we’ve taken away the need to queue up to pay, using some pretty cool technology.
When you stop by for the first time, you’ll notice barrier entry. Simply tap your contactless payment card or smart device and you’ll be let in to start shopping. It’s as easy as tapping your card to start a charge at one of our chargers.
Next, you’ll notice an array of tiny sensors and cameras throughout the store that are recording your shopping trip.
You can ignore these, as all you’ll need to do is grab what you want and then walk out through the exit barrier. It’s really that simple.
So how does the Amazon technology work?
The Amazon Just Walk Out technology uses a combination of computer vision, deep-learning and generative artificial intelligence to record what each shopper picks up and automatically bill them.
The tech giant built synthetic datasets of shopping habits (that’s a fancy way of saying it recreated millions and millions of realistic shopping scenarios in a virtual world) to create a learning manual for the computer system.
Basically, it needs to join the dots between you tapping in, picking up your meal deal and leaving, without inadvertently charging you for Joe Bloggs’ pint of milk as well.
It also has to deal with more complex and unusual scenarios. For example, what should it do if two shoppers cross hands while picking a product from the shelf? What should it do with those who repeatedly pick things up and return them to the shelves? And what about multiple shoppers (like a small family, for example) tapping in under a single card?
All of these scenarios and more were recorded, given solutions by Amazon boffins and then taught to the Just Walk Out system to make sure it’s 100% accurate in store. And it does it all that without collecting any biometric data. Clever.
The result? A seamless shopping experience that removes the need to queue up to pay, allows us to operate extended opening hours at London Gatwick Electric Forecourt® and gives you more time to recharge while your car does the same.
