Amazon today unveiled the Amazon Dash Cart, an innovative, unconventional and smart solution to long lines at the cashier. The new technology was announced through a video, where Amazon explained in great detail, how the carts would work.
With the newest experiment from Amazon, users can just walk out of a store after filling out their cart, instead of spending precious time in long queues at the cashier line.
Dash Carts are enabled with touchscreen, sensors, weighing scales, and cameras which help it detect the time that is being placed inside it. When you walk into the store you will have to scan a code for connecting your cart with your Amazon account. After you are done with the shopping, you can just walk out, and Amazon will deduct the amount from the credit card linked with your Amazon account. The cart will beep when the product is correctly identified, or flash orange if it needs to be re-added.
If an item doesn’t have a barcode, for example, a fruit, you’ll need to enter a PLU number on the Dash Cart’s touchscreen display and then confirm the weight.
In addition to this, you can view your amazon shopping last which will automatically check things off as you add them to the basket. The cart also has a coupon scanner where you can apply the coupons.
The Dash Cart will make the shopping procedure more convenient and hassle-free than before, by providing a cure for long and tiring checkout lines. Moreover, this is the perfect time for a technology like this, since this cashierless solution will drastically reduce the contact between customers and store employees, thus promoting social distancing, which is the mantra of the coronavirus times.
This technology has the potential to change the way we shop, and bring an end to the cashier profession (sorry cashiers).
Amazon is planning to first launch the dash carts in its Woodland Hills, California Grocery store which will be three times bigger than its usual Go store.
These dash carts are kind of similar to the amazon go stores which are also cashier-less supermarkets opened by amazon that have cameras and sensors in the ceiling to track what shoppers put and charge them as they leave. However, unlike amazon go stores, these dash carts are just added for user convenience, and do not alienate entire stores from non Amazon users, as they can still use the normal checkouts.
The one drawback of dash carts is the size of the cart. Only two bags can fit inside a cart, so if a customer wants to buy more stuff than that, then he/she will have to go through the normal checkout.
“Our primary motivation for building this was to be able to save customers time,” Dilip Kumar, vice president of Amazon’s physical retail and technology. “The alternativde solutions are standing in the express checkout lanes or fumbling through self-checkout stations.”
