During the Ignite conference on the Intel booth, Microsoft and Intel showcased a “retail of the future” demo. The code for this demo is now available for free on Microsoft’s Github repo.

The demo, built by the Neal Analytics team, leverages the Azure Stack Edge hardware and software capabilities to locally run a customized vision AI model to automatically detect when a product is taken off the shelves.

There are several applications for this concept. From theft (aka “shrinkage”) prevention to automatic reassortment triggering (especially for high-value items), these solutions will run locally at the store level avoid all issues related to streaming real-time video to the cloud on a permanent basis. Whether the cost to do this is prohibitive, the connection too unreliable to support it, or simply the scale across dozens, hundreds, or thousands of stores not manageable, this AI-at-the-edge solution is an innovative and scalable way to enable new use cases for future retail.

Interested to test it for yourself? Neal Analytics can help you get started by leveraging our experience with Azure Stack Edge hardware and Microsoft Cognitive Services.

Contact us to learn more.

• Watch the full Ignite session on AI at the edge (demo @34 min): https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/81965?source=sessions
• Download the presentation
• Get the demo source code