By akademiotoelektronik, 06/02/2023

How does the completely independent crossroad work inaugurated in Dubai?

Carrefour puts (timidly) a foot in the race for autonomous stores: the Majid Al Futtaim franchisee, which pilots more than 350 establishments with Carrefour in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, opened the first space on September 6, 2021autonomous sales of the region, called Carrefour City Plus.This mini -market looks like two drops of water to an Amazon Go, these grocery stores without cash or "self checking", boosted with artificial intelligence, launched by Amazon in 2018 and which are now 16 in the USA.

The net giant opened the ball, but in France all large distributors work today on the subject: Monoprix, for example, inaugurated in July 2021 an autonomous grocery of 30 square meters offering 300 references, accessible at any time of the day andof the night.It is located inside its Paris store in rue de Marseille.Specialized actors also embark on this technological marathon, such as the Storelift Boxy brand, which has opened 11 connected shops in France.

A QR Code to CT

The technology behind this crossroads City Plus is that of the young Californian Pusher Aifi.The start-up had already worked with Carrefour for its first test in the field of autonomous stores: the distributor opened in September 2019 at its headquarters in Massy a Flash Carrefour without Caisse, offering its customers-only employees and suppliers of the group- 700 product references.But this time, it is Majid Al Futtaim who is at the origin of the project and who led the deployment.According to our information, the Carrefour in France innovation teams simply advised the franchisee and played for him the scratches with AIFI.Majid Al Futtaim intends to open in the coming months new City Plus crossroads to the United Arab Emirates and in some of the regions where he operates.The company does not give figures on the cost of deploying these sales areas.In France, Carrefour is advancing on the subject and should make announcements by the end of 2021.

To enter the City City Plus Dubai, the consumer must have an account connected to his credit card on the Carrefour mobile application.The platform sends a QR code to the customer's phone that it must scan at the entrance to the store.Once this security barrier has passed, the buyer can store his mobile and put in his bag the products that interest him among the 1300 references offered, mainly snacking items, drinks or even prepared dishes.No need to scan anything: once his shopping is finished, the customer simply leaves the shop and receives on his smartphone a few seconds later a message to thank him for his visit.Between 5 and 10 minutes later, an invoice is sent to him and his bank card is debited from the amount of his purchases.

97 Ceiling cameras

To find out which items have cracked it, 97 cameras are discreetly attached to the ceiling of the mini -market.They follow each consumer throughout their route in the store, thanks to image processing algorithms based on machine learning that run in real time.The customer's face is not recorded: the artificial intelligence developed by the engineers of AIFI identifies and follows the shape of the body of each buyer.The videos of the store are only consulted by the teams of Majid Al Futtaim in the event of a problem, if a buyer contacts the company to say that his invoice does not correspond to what he has put in his basket for example,said the company in a press release.

Data extracted from the images recorded by the cameras allow Majid Al Futtaim to constantly check that all the references are well available on the shelves."We do not employ a cashier but employees assigned to logistics, who very regularly replenish the convenience store," explains Hani Weiss, CEO of Majid Al Futaim Retail in an interview with Dubaïote Dubai Eye radio.Objective: to reduce stock breaks to the maximum to satisfy buyers."We target young consumers, from the generation of millennials, they do not want to waste time looking for a product that is not on the shelves," continues the manager.The crossroads City Plus is located in a popular shopping center in Dubai, the "Mall of the Emirates" near a metro station, to capture this category of customers in a hurry.