Amazon's Dash Cart is being tested: a smart shopping cart that promises to make customers skip the queue in the supermarket
Imagine walking through the supermarket, putting the products you want to take home in the cart and then leaving without having to queue to pay. That's Amazon's idea with its Dash Cart, a smart shopping cart that bills the products and credits the shopping directly to the customer's account.
Amazon's smart cart has a touch screen and sensors, from cameras to scales, that are able to define the type of product and the amount you put in it. At the moment, the Dash Cart is only being tested in the Amazon-branded grocery store in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. The special cart will not be available in the Amazon Go stores, where cameras and sensors charge the shopping taken from the shelves, but only in a physical store that is not yet open to the public: to try them we will have to wait until the end of the year.
Amazon Dash Cart, the smart shopping cart
The Amazon Dash Cart is a smart cart equipped with a touch screen display and other hardware components that allow it to determine what and how many products you are buying. To access the service, customers will need to choose the Amazon smart cart, authenticate to their account by scanning the QR code associated with the reader on the Dash Cart. Once logged in, the shopping list that is accumulating in the cart will appear on the smartphone, and you can use Alexa's shopping list or still scan your coupons and discounts.
There is one thing to pay attention to: when depositing items in the cart, wait until you hear a "beep" confirming that the product has been registered, otherwise an orange light will come on and the product must be removed and then reinserted. Also, in the case of products without barcodes, such as fruits and vegetables, the process for entering the account changes. For example, if you want to buy apples, you will have to enter the product code from the touch screen and then put the desired quantity in the cart, which will be automatically processed and priced by the system.
At the end of the shopping you can head directly to the exit, without going through the supermarket checkout, because automatically the amount will be charged to the Amazon account linked to your Dash Cart and the receipt will be sent in real time via email.
Amazon Dash Cart, when and where to find it
The service is only available in a physical supermarket located in Los Angeles, in the Woodland Hills neighborhood. The store is not an Amazon Go store, but simply a supermarket where alongside the simple carts will be arranged also those smart Dash Cart. The store at the moment only deals with deliveries of online orders, but Amazon has announced that it will be open to the public by the end of 2020. The smart cart is therefore in the testing phase and it is not excluded that Amazon may decide to bring the innovation outside of its stores as well, should the initiative be successful.