Amazon Developing Virtual Clothes-Fitting Technology

Posted by on May 18th, 2017

Reports indicate that Amazon has built a team that is developing technology that will one day assist shoppers find clothes and shoes that fit them perfectly. If and when the technology sees the light of day, it will mark yet another way that Amazon is revolutionizing the retail sector with artificial intelligence and machine learning. This has emerged from a LinkedIn posting of an Amazon employee, Sam Dwarakanath, a software engineering executive.

“As of September 2016 I am building and leading a technical team that is focused on making it easy for customers to discover apparel and shoes that appeal to them, including finding the perfect fit,” wrote Dwarakanath.

Virtual fitting room

The Amazon executive’s profile goes further to mention that Dwarakanath’s work at the online retail giant has involved projects focusing on developing robotics and hardware for measuring items as well as research on the building of 3D models and predicting how items such as clothes and shoes will fit on an individual. That description has led to the conclusion that Amazon is intent on reducing the number of clothing and footwear items that customers return because they are ill-fitting. It is likely that the final technology that Amazon will develop will require shoppers to take a picture of an item with their phone and then demonstrate how various sizes of the item would fit on the shopper.

Some of the other machine learning and artificial intelligence products that Amazon has developed for its shoppers include making ordering possible via voice using Alexa virtual assistant. The main mobile app of Amazon also allows users to identify and order items after scanning objects with the help of image recognition.

20th anniversary as a public firm

The revelation of the technology that will further entrench Amazon in ecommerce comes just as the online retail giant marks its 20th anniversary since it got listed on the Nasdaq. Then it was just an online bookstore but has since diversified into cloud computing where it has become the leader as well as diversifying the range of products it sells online. At the time the firm lacked a path to profitability and was also facing competitive threats from publishing giants such as Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster who had by then opened online stores.

This transformation has seen Amazon pose a major threat to brick-and-mortar retail stores including Walmart, which is currently the largest player in the physical retail sector in the United States.