Smarter Stores Start at the Edge
Today's shoppers expect convenience, speed, and personalisation — and they notice when a store falls short. Edge-based computer vision powered by AI delivers on all three without the delays, outages, or cloud dependency that can undermine the in-store experience.
Axelera AI's Metis platform brings advanced computer vision capabilities directly into the retail environment, enabling fraud prevention at checkout, real-time inventory monitoring, and personalised digital signage that adapts to individual shoppers — all processed locally to protect customer privacy.
AI-Enabled Point of Sale and Loss Prevention
Shrinkage at self-checkout remains one of retail's biggest challenges. Computer vision solves this by using object detection to verify scanned items match their labels in real time — catching issues like label switching before they result in lost revenue. Video-based recognition replaces traditional weight and scale methods, making self-checkout both more accurate and more user-friendly.
The Challenge
Current hardware solutions rely on costly GPUs, creating a financial barrier that keeps many AI-powered checkout innovations stuck in the pilot phase.
The Metis Approach
Purpose-built hardware that delivers cloud-level performance within an edge power budget — working with standard camera infrastructure to reduce total cost of ownership.
Enable Large-Scale Autonomous Stores
The most ambitious retail applications combine multiple AI capabilities — object detection, classification, and pose estimation — running simultaneously for automated inventory management, customer behaviour analysis, and frictionless shopping experiences.
Why Metis Excels Here?
The Metis architecture features four self-sufficient cores that handle detection, classification, and pose estimation tasks in parallel — delivering the performance needed for complex, multi-model workloads without bottlenecks.
Crucially, Metis works with existing camera infrastructure, eliminating the need for expensive AI-equipped replacements. By bringing data-centre-level performance into a compact, energy-efficient form factor, it lowers the total cost of ownership and makes widespread deployment a realistic proposition — not just a pilot project.
Want to see how Metis can power smarter retail experiences across your stores?