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from the yes-we-have-no-bananas-but-no-we-do-have-your-face dept.
Ars Technica has a "review" of the new Amazon Go Grocery store in Seattle, WA.
Apparently, the author's first thought was to engage in some petty theft, given that there are no cashiers or visible security guards.
The article is fairly verbose, with lots of photos of the crime scene store. Overall, the new store is just like the original Amazon Go stores, but with extra surveillance features.
From the Ars article:
Because Amazon Go Grocery revolves around the same creepy, watch-you-shop system found in smaller Amazon Go shops, I encourage anyone unfamiliar with the concept to rewind to my first look at Amazon Go from early 2018. Functionally, the newest store works identically. You can't enter the shop without entering your Amazon account credentials—complete with a valid payment method—into the Amazon Go app on either iOS or Android. Which, of course, means you can't enter the store without an Internet-connected smart device.
Once the app has your Amazon information, it will generate a unique QR code. Tap this onto a gated kiosk's sensor, and after a pause, a gate will open. During this brief pause, the shop's cameras capture your likeness and begin tracking your every step and action.
[...]
Where AGG differs is its selection, which is simply bigger and more diverse. Instead of limiting its healthiest options to pre-made meals, AGG goes further to include a refrigerated wall of raw meat and seafood, a massive stock of fruits, and a wall of veggies. The latter receives the same automated water-spritzing process you'd expect from a standard grocer. (See? Amazon knows how lettuce works.)
[...]
The store's massive bathroom hallway is lined with sensors and cameras, but the bathrooms themselves do not appear to have any form of camera or sensor inside them. (I didn't take photos inside the bathroom, because I'm not DrDisrespect. You'll have to trust me on that one.) The hallway also includes a little tray outside each bathroom door where customers are encouraged to put merchandise before using the facilities. I left the only other produce in my hand at that time, a single avocado, on that tray.
[...]
This moment included a dramatic turn to the bathroom's mirror, which is when a lightbulb went off in my head. I had taken off my jacket and put it into the backpack before entering the shop. Could I confuse the cameras with a wardrobe change?It sure seems like it.
[...]
Surprisingly, then, my "costume change" fooled Amazon Go Grocery. Everything I picked up before ducking into the loo was charged correctly. After that, the app clearly lost track of me, which may align with the receipt's claim of a 2-hour, 23-minute shopping trip, well above the 20 minutes I was actually there. And Amazon needed another hour and a half to conclude that I had picked up those first items, ducked into a bathroom, and then was incapacitated by a jacket-wearing madman with an identical beard and haircut. I hope they catch that guy. He might be armed—with a banana!
So, what say you Soylentils? Is this the future of grocery stores? Should the author be arrested and charged with shoplifting? Would you go into a store like this just so you don't have to deal with cashiers (human or automated)?
I encourage (against current best practices) reading TFA, as I left out quite a bit of detail and the many photos have descriptive text as well. Just a crazy thought.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2020, @06:33PM (1 child)
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags are very small. Basically, they are passive circuits; a short antenna and a circuit. When energized by a radio wave of the correct frequency, the circuit collects enough energy to return a very low power broadcast containing a serial number.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification [wikipedia.org]
It's my understanding that the US government has been requiring tire manufacturers to embed RFID tags in tires and requiring tire retailers to maintain detailed records of which tires are sold to which customers. This is used, along with RFID readers positioned alongside freeways, to collect data about traffic movement, but also, perhaps, to track the movement of specific vehicles, which are assumed to be associated with certain tires. I think this has been going on for at least a decade, maybe more.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/tracking_automo.html [schneier.com]
RFID tags are embedded in sales tags, packaging, and perhaps (probably), actual items sold. It would not be possible to place RFID tags INSIDE of food but it would be child's play to embed an RFID tag inside each tag which is attached to each fruit, and so it is almost certainly true that this is where the tag is at. This is how they detect shoplifters, as well.
There is nothing to prevent an object from possessing mutiple RFID tags. The objects being sold may have an RFID tag. The packaging it is contained in may have an RFID tag. And the sales tag attached by the vendor may ALSO have an RFID tag. This provides a form of quality control; detecting forgeries becomes easier, and if the RFID tag's serial (IE, sequential) number is replaced by a non-sequential hash of the REAL serial number, or some other form of encryption, then forgery bcomes almost impossible.
(I keep waiting for the US government to catch on to the possibilities and start issuing monetary notes with encrypted "serial" numbers. But, nope. Everyone with a spark of creativity has been ruthlessly replaced. Everyone left is afraid of losing their job. No one dares to be innovative. No one wants to be first. It won't happen until the Chinese do it. Then everyone will be falling all over themselves trying to claim they thought of it first. Those stupid assholes are a fishbone in the throat of America. Now, back to our story.)
Tracking the movement of an RFID tag by triangulating the signal using multiple sensors, and then indexing it against the movements of a specific cart, controlled by a specific person, with a specific face and specific accounting information, should be straightforward. As is notifying the authorities if a banana comes up missing; they can track the movement of stock down to the individual banana. Admittedly, it may not be cost-effective to prosecute you. They just won't let you into the store any more.
Sources of entertainment for the population: trading carts. But it won't matter in the end, you'll confuse the system but they will make the same amount of money and so they won't care.
Better sources of entertainment: putting things down in places other than where you picked them up. But I think some people have been doing this, as entertainment, for years. Just ... now, you're on camera, and they know who you are. They may eventually tell you to stop it.
Sources of angst for the management: people smuggling in their own RFID tags. But, again, I'm not sure that will make a difference. The robot will see two RFID tags, neither will obscure the other, one will make sense and one will not. It wll discard the one it does not recognize. And the antennae will see that bundle of RFID tags in your pocket the moment you walk in the door unless you're wearing shielding. (-:
How about COPYING RFID tags? Well, they won't have too much trouble figuring out who bought the merchandise that the tag was copied from. If there's any sort of a pattern, the responsible parties will see their privileges terminated.
No, I think there's only one way I can think of to jam the system, and that would be to replicate the tag of something that has not left the store yet, AND to discreetly attach such a tag to other people, or their carts, so as to trigger automated shoplifting systems. But the management will probably be able to pin-point whomever smuggled the tags into the store. It would take a network of people and some sort of shielding technology to implement this, properly.
https://www.ebags.com/category/handbags/f/rfid-blocking [ebags.com]
Probably easier to just drop the banana in the handbag. Or to eat it and leave the peel in the garbage, in the bathroom. But there will be no uncertainty about whom took it INTO the bathroom.
I hope this deep dive into shoplifting detection technologies wll save a few hundred of you readers from testing this system, to your loss. Because it's only a matter of time until the notification to the police is entirely automated and there is no human to beg for mercy. Pass the word.
I remember reading a science fiction story, back in the 1970s - it might have been translated - about this guy, living in the future, in Germany, where there is a zoo, with non-terrestrial creatures, and also a scientist, doing an experiment, that involves a beam of energy. The beam passes through the German, and the alien, and suddenly they find themselves in one another's bodies. The rest of the story follows the adventures of the alien, and of the German native, in each other's bodies. At one point the alien enters a futuristic grocery store, where people are billed automatically, at checkout, for the food they take off the shelves. He comes to the attention of the authorities because he does not know how to use the system, and is driven to steal, so that he is tracked down, and captured, and they discover what happens. ... The story ends with the German's discovery, that he is occupying the body of the female of the alien species ... and, he is pregnant.
The future is here. No aliens, though. Yet.
~childo
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2020, @07:17PM
From TFA:
If RFID was in use that would never have happened. Is it painful talking out of your ass like that?