Boosting the Iteration and Upgrade of Industries Smart Vending Machines Transform Future Retail With AI

Beijing, May 25, 2018 (Newswire.com) - ​​ Taking advantage of the gathering storm of new retail, unattended shelves are sought after by investors, and have become the new targets for investments. For a time, unattended shelves of various brands are mushrooming. Yet, the once very popular unattended shelves in office buildings have been taken out quietly. It’s really a pity. So why did unattended shelves as a new retail model exist only for a very short period of time under the office scenario? And what does the future hold for it? 

What is the way out for unattended shelves in the future?

It’s rumored that companies operating unattended shelves are going bankrupt after one year of crazy expansion, during which they’ve deployed almost 100 thousand unattended shelves at outlets in multiple cities. Despite various problems encountered by some companies, it seems that the wave of their bankruptcy still comes earlier than expected. Today, some companies have already left this space sadly. 

According to people in the industry, although it’s not very difficult to enter the space of unattended shelves, actually their requirements on logistics, supply chain and operation are extremely high. Fast expansion ignoring the subsequent operation and maintenance of the existing locations has led to oversupply, difficult management, and inability to make a profit. Such a status quo has caused controversies one after another around unattended shelves. 

In retrospect, the key issue with unattended shelves is that they are selling snacks and beverages only, whereas these products are highly standard with very low margins. But if they want to sell nonstandard items, such as those requiring a cold chain and having a short shelf life like fruits and dairy products, the difficulty of the entire supply chain will be substantially increased. So what is the way out for unattended shelves in the future? The only way out is ongoing innovation and upgrade.

Upgrading to the smart vending machines as the smallest retail units

Actively embracing new technologies is seen as one way of retailers to proactively upgrade themselves. For example, the smart vending machines developed by YI Tunnel are exactly the products of retail upgrade. Compared to other similar products, the pure-vision recognition model adopted by YI Tunnel for both merchandise and movements is more suitable for commercial application. Besides, it is smarter and has also dramatically reduced the cost. 

It is said that the company’s smart vending machines are based on the Convolutional Neural Network algorithm and adopt a dynamic pure-vision solution to dynamically recognize the action of taking an item and putting it back with an accuracy rate of over 99 percent. The machines really allow you to “take and go”. Unlike the vending machines currently in the marketplace, these machines don’t need the RFID tags or weight sensors to recognize both standard and nonstandard items. You can take multiple items in one hand or in both hands. They also allow you to take an item without having to put it back to its original place. Or you can even put one item on another and the machines can still recognize it. The machines don’t have requirement on where the items are placed inside the freezer. This helps to lower the operating cost and accommodate more items in a single freezer.

Publicly available information shows that the smart vending machines have been deployed and put into use simultaneously at Beijing’s CSF Market and the Hainan Tower in Haikou. The scene was very hot at both locations. Many people who have experienced the machines said that they are very convenient, fast, and smart. 

It’s worth noting that the smart vending machines not only have provided a convenient experience for consumers, but also are supported by a powerful backend operation management platform as well as an operation & maintenance app, to help client monitor the freezer in real time for smart operation and allow them to restock the freezer smartly. For example, when operation staff restocks the freezer, the machine can automatically recognize the quantity of merchandise to be restocked, and the staff can view the operation of multiple machines at the same time, can check out the number of items sold by each machine, and can carry out merchandise management, procurement management, order management and transfer management etc.​

Industry analysts said that China’s retail industry is in a critical transformation period, and that its development is demonstrated not just in the use of digital and other new technologies, but also in the fast upgrade of service models. The smart vending machines, used under the new retail model, have fully leveraged the help of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Today, most other smart vending machines mainly rely on weight recognition and RFID tags to recognize merchandise, and there is a very big room for improvement in terms of cost, supervision, and compatibility. In comparison, the smart vending machine solution recognizing merchandise based on AI technologies is more mature and also more suitable for the complex and changing scenarios in new retail. 

  Smart vending machines need to keep innovating and get ready to operate in the retail industry in advance 

Various processes in the retail industry have become more people-oriented, more efficient and more intelligent due to the upgrade of retail technologies. The application of various technologies under retail scenarios helps to improve consumer experience and save their time. The application of those technologies also makes data collection more diverse and helps to realize data-based operation management.

The advantage of smart vending machines is that they can solve the damage and loss of merchandise, make numerous retail outlets smarter, and help to increase the digital level of shelves. This digital capability across the value chain can effectively increase the operational efficiency of shelves. The team at YI Tunnel said that smart vending machines need to always focus on innovation and get ready to operate in the retail industry in advance. They said that they have to maintain the advantage of AI in smart retail and tech retail to support the transformation of retailers in conjunction with the application of big data.

Source: YI Tunnel

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