Retailers Race Against Amazon to Automate Stores

But the opening of Amazon Go in January was alarming for many retailers, who saw a sudden willingness by Amazon to wield its technology power in new ways. Hundreds of cameras near the ceiling and sensors in the shelves help automatically tally the cookies, chips and soda that shoppers remove and put into their bags. Shoppers' accounts are charged as they walk out the doors.

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"Unanimously, there was an element of embarrassment because here is an online retailer showing us how to do brick and mortar, and frankly doing it amazingly well," said Martin Hitch, the chief business officer of Bossa Nova Robotics, a company that makes inventory management robots that Walmart and others are testing.

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Nowhere are retailers experimenting more avidly with automating store shopping than in China, a country obsessed by new tech fads.

One effort is a chain of more than 100 unmanned convenience shops from a start-up called Bingo Box, one of which sits in a business park in Shanghai. Shoppers scan a code on their phones to enter and, once inside, scan the items they want to buy. The store unlocks the exit door after they've paid through their phones.

Alibaba, one of China's largest internet companies, has opened 35 of its Hema automated grocery stores, which blend online ordering with automated checkout. Customers scan their groceries at checkout kiosks, using facial recognition to pay electronically, while bags of groceries ordered by customers online float overhead on aerial conveyors, headed to a loading dock for delivery to shoppers.

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At 120 of Walmart's 4,700 American stores, shoppers can also scan items, including fruits and vegetables, using the camera on their smartphones and pay for them using the devices. When customers walk out, an employee checks their receipts and does a "spot check" of the items they bought.

Kroger, one of the country's largest grocery chains, has also been testing a mobile scanning service in its supermarkets, recently announcing that it would expand it to 400 of its more 2,700 stores.

New start-ups are seeking to give retailers the technology to compete with Amazon's system. One of them, AiFi, is working on cashierless checkout technology that it says will be flexible and affordable enough that mom-and-pop retailers and bigger outlets can use it. In the United States, venture capitalists put $100 million into retail automation start-ups in each of the past two years, up from about $64 million in 2015, according Pitchbook, a financial data firm.

"There's a gold rush feeling about this," said Alan O'Herlihy, chief executive of Everseen, an Irish company working with retailers on automated checkout technology that uses artificial intelligence.

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If they succeed, these new technologies could add further uncertainty to the retail work force, which is already in flux because of the growth of online shopping. An analysis last year by the World Economic Forum said 30 to 50 percent of the world's retail jobs could be at risk once technologies like automated checkout were fully embraced.