How Amazon Go would really work: patent holds clues

The online giant has revealed its advanced concept for a store utilizing "Just Walk Out" technology. SAN FRANCISCO -- The Amazon Go grocery store, now in the testing stage in Seattle, has captured the public's attention. At a time of year when many people are standing in long lines to do their holiday shopping, the idea of being able to walk into a store, pick things up, walk out and have everything automatically charged to a credit card sounds like a dream come true. The video the Seattle company released online Monday said nothing about the underlying technology beyond some buzz-words: computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion. But a patent filed by the company in 2014 and published in 2015 may shed some light on the process, and it looks like it's all about cameras and microphones.