According to Chaudhry, the four camera setup in a small shop alleyway worked reliably with up to 25 shoppers at a time, without inducing AI-inferencing errors from vision occlusion. Catering for more people at a time is just a matter of increasing the computing power, he said.

Such cashier-less grab-and-go grocery retail stores could deliver 24/7 service in hotels, high-rise apartment blocks and office complexes, but Chaudhry even envisions that such autonomous shops could become mobile. This could be implemented as a container-type mobile shop operated at different fixed locations and replenished by the retailer’s logistics. In the future, one could even imagine that a fleet of autonomous driving shops would drive to your door step, offering on-demand corner shops.

CloudPick has already established some partnerships with large retail corporations and it has 30 installations operating in China. The company is now talking to retailers in the US and in Korea. The retail market has always been a big vertical for Intel, and it is getting bigger and bigger, Chaudhry concluded.

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