Drop by the 7-Eleven outlet at Hive 2.0 along Esplanade Xchange to take a sneak peek at the future of convenience stores.
Called 7-Eleven Shop & Go, the autonomous store offers a cashierless and frictionless experience. Shoppers will need to tap their credit card to enter. A small fee is then charged to verify the card, which will be used to offset their purchase or refunded if there is no purchase.
Thereafter, shoppers can simply pick the items they need and walk out as their purchase will be automatically charged to their credit card as they leave the store. All of this is enabled by smart cameras, deep learning and multi-sensor fusion technologies.
“The 7-Eleven Shop & Go store will run for a minimum of six months while we gather and review feedback. We have set a limit of five shoppers within the store to ensure a comfortable shopping experience, and we will continue to monitor and adjust this limit, if necessary,” Serene Seow, managing director of 7-Eleven Singapore, shares with DigitalEdge. DigitalEdge also understands that 7-Eleven may expand the accepted payment options if the trial is scaled up in the future.
Besides that, office workers at South Beach Development can order items from Esplanade MRT station’s 7-Eleven through the QuikBot app and get them delivered to their office buildings via robots.
QuikBot's delivery robots will autonomously transport purchases, consolidating orders on larger robots with a fleet of smaller ones, seamlessly navigating lifts, gantries, and multiple buildings to deliver items directly to office floors. These robots will exchange items with each other to optimise logistics efficiency and they will self-navigate on common corridors as they move between Esplanade MRT and South Beach Tower.
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QuikBot's autonomous delivery robots can self-navigate along common corridors between Esplanade MRT and South Beach Tower to transport orders. Photo: Stellar Lifestyle
7-Eleven Shop & Go and QuikBot are among the innovations currently being tested at Hive 2.0, a 3,200 sq ft retail innovation hub of Stellar Lifestyle, a business arm of SMRT. Other new retail concepts (mostly developed by local start-ups) that can be found there include:
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- The Gym Pod – An on-demand fully-private gym to help health-conscious commuters hit their fitness goals.
- JAVIS – An upcoming fully automated bubble tea store that can brew freshly made bubble tea tailored to customers’ preferences.
- BuzzAR – A virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that provides shopping guidance and recommendations to Hive customers.
- Mr.R Robotics – Singapore’s first adaptive robotics retail store, serving frozen, chilled and ambient products concurrently.
- NOYES – A fully automated nano-warehousing storage solution to support re-stocking and self-collection for retailers.
- Le Tach Vending – An intelligent vending machine operator that stocks traditional and non-traditional products, ranging from herbal teas to bak kwa (sweetmeat) and fresh fruit.
- IncuBaker – An F&B Incubator offering a co-working kitchen workspace and studio to help aspiring F&B entrepreneurs test and sell their products.
- Yzel – An AI-powered, pop-up sampling solution that helps local brands access complementary physical spaces for product display, sampling and sales.
- Tap Tiles – A startup that designs kinetic floor tiles which can harvest clean energy in the form of electricity and data from footsteps while engaging the users in the process.
“Hive by Stellar Lifestyle continues to support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) by introducing and validating innovations. This year, Hive 2.0 will leverage AI, robotics and connected networks to help our merchant partners become more operationally resilient,” says Tony Heng, president of Stellar Lifestyle.
He continues: “We designed these innovations to leverage our extensive rail network, allowing us to create new in-store experiences where consumers can enjoy greater convenience and enhanced retail experiences. What you see here today could scale across the train network in the future, as SMRT is committed to Moving People, Enhancing Lifestyles.”
