French retailer expands partnership with Shekel Brainweigh, opens second public micro market

Following the pilot of its first autonomous store in Paris, Monop is expanding its relationship with Shekel Brainweigh for a second store operating in a micro market framework. Monop’s autonomous stores exist in Shekel’s Capsule micro market systems.

The new store, which opened in commercialization phase, is located in Paris’s Rue De Marseille neighborhood. The autonomous store section is part of a standard shop during working hours, but once the store closes, the section remains open with access control.

The autonomous store uses several technologies to provide an unattended, contactless shopping. Patrons use a mobile payment app to check in, select their goods and walk out. This provides the retailer with an off-hour’s revenue source.

Monop is part of the Casino Group, a French retail organization. Its micro market technology is deployed through a partnership between Shekel Brainweigh and the innovation teams of the Casino Group in place since the end of 2019.

Shekel's Capsule is described as a frictionless shopping framework that includes both seamless product recognition and shopper tracking.

These attributes enable a fully automated shopping experience. In its full capacity it acts as an autonomous shopping solution, a perfect real time inventory management platform and privacy compliant using Hitachi’s 3D LiDAR shopper-tracking technology based on Shekel’s IoT Load Sensors and advanced AI algorithms.

Shekel has developed its Product Aware Technology to enable extremely fast and highly accurate on-shelf product recognition. The integrated 3D LiDAR sensors are able to track multiple concurrent shoppers.