You know what's weird??... Amazon Employees Use PIKACHU to Test Automated Grocery Store

Amazon is still struggling to get its automated grocery store, Amazon Go , to function right. Who knew it would be so hard to build a brick-and-mortar store with sensors and gadgets instead of cashiers? But in a recent test of the company's experimental Seattle store, some of Jeff Bezos' employees got a little weird. They dressed up in Pikachu costumes to go shopping.

Amazon employees dress up as characters from an old Game Boy game and people who read about the experiment might assume that magical sensors somehow spotted the humans underneath their costumes. It's a whimsical tale to be sure.

Now for the misleading part. We actually know from previous reports and Amazon's own promotional video that customers scan their smartphones upon entering the store. We can only assume that Amazon Go uses some sort of beacon technology to track where customers' through their smartphones as they wander the store and stop to collect items. Amazon hasn't revealed exactly how the system works, but the Amazon Go promotional video features terms like "COMPUTER VISION" and "DEEP LEARNING ALGORITHMS" and "SENSOR FUSION.

But despite the success of the Pokemon experiment, the store still has issues with the more existential questions of grocery shopping that are typically resolved by a human cashier. Bloomberg goes on to report.