It’s called Dojo and it’s the largest stand-alone store in Europe packed with grocery products and the most sophisticated technology.
It’s not open to the general public, but it serves as a test lab and showcase for retailers to see what the future of shopping will look like. 4gnews was at the official opening of the space and tells you how Artificial Intelligence can be applied to facilitate the customer experience when buying essential goods.
Store Dojo is a laboratory to test technology
Portuguese start-up Sensei inaugurated the Dojo store, a fully autonomous retail space with 500 square meters and a layout (or distribution) equal to that of any conventional supermarket.
But there the similarities with the so-called conventional supermarkets end. It is a completely autonomous space that, thanks to the integration of the latest technology, allows the customer to make purchases and pay for them (almost) without human assistance.
It should be noted that this autonomous store of the future is not open to the general public. At the moment, it functions as a test lab and exhibition space for experimenting with the solutions and for retailers to see these same solutions in action in practical life.
Operation of an autonomous purchase
But let’s go to the details. When the consumer enters the independent store, an anonymous user profile is immediately created that will accompany the entire purchase process. Every time the consumer removes a product from the shelf, it is added to their shopping cart. For example, user RP9 has a cereal package and a milk package in her basket.
Once the purchase is complete, the consumer goes to the payment terminals to finish the process. You can do it in two ways: if you have a store app installed on your smartphone, simply pass the device through the payment terminal to validate and pay for the purchases made. If you do not have the application, you will only have to touch the touch screen of the payment terminal to validate the purchases, followed by the payment in cash or bank card.
Very similar to what already happens with the self-service checkout currently available in several supermarkets, but without the more complicated phase of passing each item through the dedicated sensor and scale.
All because each shelf of this autonomous store has scales and sensors that detect the exit of an item. On the other hand, a set of cameras, strategically located throughout the store, are capable of identifying the type of product that the consumer is removing from the shelves.
To provide this autonomous experience, Dojo relies on the latest technology in artificial vision, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. In practice, by combining these technologies, the consumer’s location in the store and what items they have with them are displayed in real time on a monitor. Returning to the previous example, the user RP9 appears on the screen with a specific color associated with the package of milk and package of cereals that he has in the shopping cart.
The Sensei concept is anti-theft and guarantees the total privacy of the consumer
Because the entire tour is monitored in real time, Sensei ensures that this self-contained store concept is anti-theft. The Portuguese start-up also guarantees that consumer privacy is protected, since the profile created is anonymous, in addition to the fact that each visit to the store will create a different profile for the same consumer. Today it will be RP9, tomorrow it will take the profile of XT5.
Even so, according to statements by Sensei officials to 4gnews, preferences or consumption habits can be identified that can then be transmitted not only to the retailer but also to the brands present in the spaces. In practice, the data collected refers to the preferences of a group and never to an individual person, so the privacy policy is fully complied with.
Another advantage of this autonomous system is that the retailer has information on stock (or lack of it in the store) in real time. Every time a product is removed from the shelves, this absence is immediately recorded so that the retailer knows that he needs to restock the product on the shelf.
All this information is processed by several servers, in this case by the Hewlett Packard Enterprise company that currently has an alliance with the start-up Sensei.
And although the Dojo is not open to the public, thanks to Sensei’s association with the Continente brand, the concept of an autonomous and intelligent store can already be experienced by the general public in the Continente Labs space. Here, the technology of the start Portuguese -up is already in action and you can experience what it will be like to buy in a future that may not be so far away.
