5年前，亚马逊(Amazon)开始研究一个秘密项目：如何消除商店里的结账排队现象。亚马逊高管们认为，实体店购物已经相当完美了，除了一件事以外——没有人喜欢排队等待。
The result of that project is Amazon Go, a futuristic convenience store in which shoppers are tracked by hundreds of cameras on the ceiling and a computer algorithm that analyses their every gesture, and then tallies up their receipt when they exit. Amazon calls this “just walk out” shopping, because there is no checkout counter and no checkout line, just a few turnstiles like those on the underground.
该项目的成果是Amazon Go，这是一家有着未来主义风格的便利店，天花板上有数百台摄像机跟踪购物者，计算机算法则分析他们的每一个动作，并在他们离开时结账。亚马逊称之为“拿完就走”(just walk out)式购物，因为没有收银台，不用排队结账，只有几个就像地铁里那样的闸机。
The store, which has been in testing since December 2016 and opens to the public on Monday, represents Amazon’s most provocative effort yet to reshape the future of brick-and-mortar retail.
这家店从2016年12月开始试运营，并在本周一面向公众开业，它代表着亚马逊迄今最为激进的重塑实体零售未来的努力。
Located in a ground-floor retail spot at the centre of Amazon’s campus in Seattle, the shop has posters in its windows advertising the “just walk out” shopping experience. To underscore the point, each receipt comes with a “trip timer” so shoppers see exactly how many seconds it took to grab their goods. The items for sale are similar to what might be found in a deli or a corner store, with an in-store kitchen that prepares fresh sandwiches and salads.
该店位于西雅图亚马逊园区中心的一个位于一层的零售点，橱窗里张贴着宣传“拿完就走”购物体验的海报。为了强调这一点，每张收据都带有一个“行程计时器”，购物者可以准确地看到他们买走商品所用的秒数。该店出售的商品与熟食店或者街头小店类似，店内还有制作新鲜三明治和沙拉的厨房。
Although it was founded as an online-only bookstore, Amazon’s aggressive push into physical retail has surprised — and alarmed — many of its retail competitors. The company now operates 13 brick-and-mortar bookstores, several grocery pick-up points and, since its $13.7bn acquisition last year, hundreds of Whole Foods stores across the US.
虽然亚马逊成立时只是家在线书店，但其积极进军实体零售业让许多零售竞争对手感到意外和紧张。该公司现在经营着13家实体书店和几个杂货提取点，去年以137亿美元收购全食(Whole Foods)后，还经营着美国各地数百家全食门店。
However the complexity of the Amazon Go store’s design means that it is more of an experimental concept at the moment, rather than a mature technology that can be easily and cheaply replicated. The store was initially supposed to open to the public in the spring of 2017 but was delayed until this month amid reports it was not quite working as expected.
然而，Amazon Go设计复杂，这意味着它目前更多是一个实验性的概念，而不是一种可以轻松而低成本复制的成熟技术。该店最初本来定于在2017年春季向公众开放，但据媒体报道称，由于进展不像预期那样顺利，所以一直延迟到本月。
Dilip Kumar, who oversees the technology behind the Amazon Go store, explains that the store uses computer vision — the ceiling is dotted with hundred of video cameras — to determine what shoppers are picking out.
Amazon Go的技术负责人迪利普•库马尔(Dilip Kumar)解释称，店铺使用计算机视觉——安装在天花板上的数百台摄像机——来确定购物者正在挑选什么。
“Five years ago when we started this, we said: can we push the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning to create this effortless experience for customers to come in, take what they want, and leave?” he says.
他说：“当我们在5年前启动该项研究的时候，我们说：我们可以用计算机视觉和机器学习为客户实现这种进来拿上想要的东西走人的轻松体验吗?”
Mr Kumar points to the cameras that nearly blanket the ceiling, and explains that the computer algorithm uses these to determine which customer is taking which products. There are also weight sensors on the store shelves, but these are less useful because different items can have the same weight, such as different flavours of yoghurt.
库马尔指着几乎遍布天花板的摄像机解释说，计算机算法使用这些摄像机来确定哪个客户正在拿哪些产品。商店货架上还有重量传感器，但这些重量传感器用处不大，因为不同物品可以有相同的重量，例如不同风味的酸奶。
“The holy grail is video understanding,” he says. “To be able to understand and interpret and know exactly what is happening. Doing this at scale and getting transaction-level accuracy is what makes this challenging.”
他说：“视频理解是关键。要能够理解和解释并准确地知道发生了什么。这种技术的挑战在于大规模应用和达到交易级精度。”
He explains that one of the most difficult things for the algorithm to master is when the store gets crowded. “It is much more convoluted when you have 50 people picking up multiple items or browsing,” he says. “They are occluded, they occlude each other, items are getting occluded, and the items are small.”
他解释说，算法要应付的最困难的情况之一是在商店变得拥挤的时候。他说：“当有50个人拿起多件物品或浏览的时候，事情就会复杂很多。他们被遮挡、互相遮挡、物品被挡住，还有物品很小。”
Over the past year, the tech team has been improving the algorithm so that it is trained to handle these scenarios, including when customers might partially cover an item with their hand when they take it from the shelf.
在过去的一年中，Amazon Go的技术团队一直在改进算法，训练它处理这些情况，包括客户从货架上拿走商品时手可能部分挡住商品的情况。
To help facilitate identification, certain items in the store such as sandwiches also have a special dot code on top, similar to a bar code but designed with circles and diamonds that make it easier for a camera to read from a distance.
为了便于识别，商店中的某些商品(如三明治)在顶部也有一个特殊的点码，它类似于条形码，但被设计成圆形和菱形，以方便摄像机远距离读取。
While Mr Kumar vowed that the technology was “very, very accurate”, he declined to specify when the company might open other Amazon Go stores. “We’d love to build more,” he said, without elaborating.
虽然库马尔发誓说这项技术“非常非常准确”，但他拒绝透露公司何时开设其他的Amazon Go商店。他说：“我们很想开更多店，”但没有详细说明。
Mr Kumar also said the company has “no plans” to introduce its checkout-free shopping in any Whole Foods stores, nor in the Amazon bookstores.
库马尔还表示，该公司“没有计划”在任何全食门店或亚马逊书店推出免排队结账购物服务。
Nevertheless, in the year since Amazon first unveiled plans to reinvent the grocery store with Amazon Go, rivals have raced to invest in similar technologies as they battle for market share of the $800bn US grocery business.
然而，在亚马逊首次公布以Amazon Go重塑杂货店的计划以来的一年里，竞争对手们纷纷投资于类似的技术，以争抢美国8000亿美元杂货市场的份额。
Plans have ratcheted up since Amazon acquired Whole Foods last summer. In the ensuing months bankers have worked closely with their brick-and-mortar clients to help them come up with a tech-centric defence to the threat.
自去年夏天亚马逊收购全食以来，类似计划大幅增加。在这笔收购后的几个月中，银行家们与他们的实体店客户密切合作，帮助他们构建以技术为核心的防御措施。
Some of those moves are already materialising as Kroger, the largest standalone US grocery chain, is rolling out its own take on the cashier-free experience this year. Visitors to a Kroger supermarket will be able to scan the barcodes of food on their smartphone as they walk through the aisles, and pay at a self-checkout machine upon leaving the store. The company says it will roll this technology out to 400 of its more than 2,700 stores in 2018.
其中一些举措已经实现，美国最大的独立食品连锁企业克罗格(Kroger)今年正在推出自己的免收银购物体验。在克罗格超市，顾客可以在浏览货架时用智能手机扫描食物的条形码，然后在离开超市时在自助结账机上结账。该公司表示，将在2018年将这一技术推广到其2700多家店铺中的400家。
Walmart, which derives more than half of its nearly $500bn annual sales from food, is testing a grocery shopping experience without cashiers in places including Dallas and Orlando. The company says that by the end of this month, 100 of its supermarkets will allow customers to buy groceries through a smartphone app — only interacting with a human when they show their digital receipt to an employee before walking out the door.
在沃尔玛(Walmart)近5000亿美元的年销售额当中，逾一半来自食品销售。沃尔玛正在达拉斯和奥兰多等地尝试推出没有收银员的购物体验。该公司表示，到本月底，将有100家超市允许顾客通过智能手机应用购买商品——唯一与人打交道的时候是在出门前向员工展示数字收据。
Doug McMillon, chief executive of Walmart, has referred to himself as a "gadget-guy" and promised to mould Walmart into more of a tech company since he took the helm in 2014. At a conference last week, he boiled down the challenge, and the impetus, for retailers’ race to cut the queues.
沃尔玛首席执行官董明伦(Doug McMillon)自称是个“工具人”，他自2014年掌舵沃尔玛以来一直承诺要让沃尔玛更像一家科技公司。董明伦在上周的一次会议上总结了零售商竞相减少排队的挑战和动力。
“All around the world,” he said, “people want to save money and they want to save time.”
他说：“在世界各地，人们都希望省钱、省时间。”
