United States Patent

At present, the people going to Amazon Go Cashierless stores (a new kind of grocery and convenience store with the world’s most advanced technology for shopping) require to scan an app for entering inside. In the coming future, Amazon may instead ask them to scan their hands for the same. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has recently published a Patent Application from Amazon corresponding to a touchless scanning system, which would be capable of identifying people not only by their faces but also the characteristics or features of the palms of their hands, including veins and wrinkles.

The filing of the patent application doesn’t clearly imply whether the multinational technology company shall develop this kind of technology or not. However, according to various reports, Amazon was testing some technology a while ago that would enable the customers to scan their hand for paying at checkout instead of swiping a card. Nevertheless, if the technology finds its way into the real world, it seems that Amazon might consider using and implementing this technology at its Amazon Go Stores. Most of the inventors’ names written on the patent application include the employees who are currently working at Amazon Go. Dilip Kumar, the head of technology for Amazon Go and the vice president of Amazon’s physical retail initiatives, is one of those names.

Now that Amazon dominates multiple types of online shopping in the United States, the patent filing is a glimpse of the company’s creative ideas for putting its tech-forward spin on how people usually shop at the brick-and-mortar stores. However, this new potential method of identifying people with the help of biometrics will most probably raise several questions against Amazon that is presently facing exceedingly high scrutiny over its products’ privacy concerns corresponding to its Ring home security system and Alexa voice assistant.

In the patent application published by the USPTO, the inventors have described the hand recognition system as a scanner device used for obtaining raw images of a customer’s palm that shall be within the field of view of the scanner. The first set of images obtained represent the external characteristics, including creases and lines on the customer’s palm, and the second set of images represent the internal anatomical structures, including the bones, veins, soft tissues, or other structure beneath the skin’s epidermis. The inventors have also described the positioning of the scanners at the entry and exit points of a specific location along with linking the scan with the person’s account.

In the past two years, Amazon has launched 24 Amazon Go locations in the United States, with the first one opened at the ground floor of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. The customers going to the store need to scan a special Amazon Go app at a turnstile before they enter. The stores then depend on a combination of different cameras and sensors that allow the customers to shop the required items and leave without stopping to make the payment as the money automatically gets deducted from their accounts once they exit.