MORTON GROVE, IL — High-tech contactless shopping is now a reality in more places.

Amazon, which is pushing deeper into the grocery store business, has eliminated check-out lines with a handful of stores offering the cashier-less experience. The stores don't even require you to scan your items as you select them off the shelf, a model that could become the future of all smart shopping.

With a quick QR code scan, you’re checked in.

“A lot of the feedback we get is I feel like, 'I'm shoplifting. I'm stealing,'” said Carl Andersen, a store manager at Amazon Fresh in Morton Grove, Illinois.

The company had already used "Amazon Dash Carts" to record purchases. But this is different.

Look up at the ceiling and you’ll see a trellis of cameras. Numbering in the hundreds, they are covering every square inch of the store.

“The cameras pick up what item was placed and scanned and given to you,” explained Andersen.

Coupled with computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning, the technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves.

Whatever you leave with is charged to your credit card that is linked to your Amazon account when you scan out.

“You don't walk out of with a receipt directly, but you'll get a receipt within just a few hours of leaving the store,” said Andersen.

Instead of paper cards, produce prices are centrally updated and displayed electronically on mini-screens similar to a Kindle reader.

“They'll display the item itself, how much it is, if it's on sale and it also has a star rating on there just to show you, ‘Hey, this item has been reviewed 20,000 times on Amazon,” said Andersen.

There are a handful of Alexa stations where you can find out anything you need to know about where things are, recipe suggestions or what’s on sale that week.

Since September of 2020, the tech giant has opened 23 specialty Amazon Fresh grocery locations around the country. A half dozen stores are now using the “Just Walk Out technology” in California, Illinois, Washington state and Washington, D.C.

And it’s looking like this could be the future of in-store shopping.

One study found that the value of transactions processed by smart checkout technologies will reach $387 billion in 2025.

There are still employees in the store, stocking shelves, making fresh sushi, and preparing home deliveries. Cashiers are on hand in case you’re unnerved by all the cameras and want to shop without being tracked.

“We'll have the people that are a little nervous at the beginning to use it,” said Andersen. “So, the first time they come in, they might want to choose to do traditional shopping, or they might want to talk to the cashiers as they're walking out of the door.”

But the company says it encourages shoppers to use the technology, so they don’t have to wait in line or ever open their wallets.

“There's no line. There's no wait,” said Andersen. “You're truly just getting a quick shopping experience and you can make it as long or as quick as you want.”

Driven in part by the pandemic, the automated technology is already making its way to other retailers. Amazon says the “Just Walk Out technology” is now being used in retail, hospitality, and stadium settings with more to come.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas highlights some of the year's innovations in technology, showcasing robots that have been developed to handle everyday tasks.

One robot that's already emerged in the South Korean market follows you around, hauling your luggage and even taking it to your room, and it doesn't even expect a tip.

All it needs is the guidance of a human being.

Bellhops may not be too impressed, and restaurant bussers may want to throw water at another new robot that wants to do their job for them.

That robot can navigate around restaurants, collecting plates, glasses, and other dirty dishes.

The model goes for around $18,000 and is already being put to use in restaurants in China. 

Another robotics company hopes you'll be so fed up with shoveling snow that you'd shell out $3,000 to $4,000 for the Snowbot — the world's first smart snow-clearing robot.

You use beacons to set a perimeter and let the snowblower do its thing. Eighty of them are being beta tested this winter.

A South Korean company has also created a prototype of a robot designed to autonomously move through a parking garage and charge electric vehicles.

However, this is the first prototype, so the company doesn't have a timeframe for when you might see one of them at a garage near you.

All of these are examples of how the next generation of robots — empowered by artificial intelligence — are offering potential solutions for tasks more consequential than fixing us a cup of coffee.

Jason Bellini at Newsy first reported this story.

BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — Dozens of chickens at Aspen Moon Farm in northern Colorado provide eggs for thousands of people in its community.

Every week, the eggs are sold through the county’s farmer’s market. Farm Manager Josh Olsen says ordering food through the market is a great way to support your community.

“It’s going directly into the family’s pocket and to the local economy,” Olsen said.

Considering farmers markets are typically a place where many people gather, a lot has changed since the start of the pandemic. Boulder County Farmers Markets went online.

“All of the sudden instead of having the vegetables speak for themselves, photos had to be taken, descriptions had to populated into these online platforms,” Olsen said.

Going online is something Boulder County Farmers Markets Executive Director Brian Coppom says they always intended to do. Along with it, curbside pickup, and a lot of logistics to figure out.

“It took purchasing box trucks, refrigerated trucks, we had to purchase walk-in coolers, freezers, tables, sanitation equipment, PPE, we had to invest in simple things like thermometers and pulse oximeters to check the staff on a regular basis,” Coppom said.

Through many months of trial and error, Coppom says they’ve nearly perfected the process. He’s eager to share their success with other farmers across the country. That’s where Farmers Market Coalition comes into play.

“We really like to create this network for farmers market operators to communicate with each other," Farmers Market Coalition's Hannah Fuller said. "And we’ve heard from a lot of those operators that that network has been really important for sharing expertise but also just not feeling alone in this really unique position in running a farmers market.”

Hannah Fuller says the coalition conducted a survey last summer and found approximately one fourth of farmers markets had moved their operations online. Others have continued in-person shopping with social distancing and sanitation protocols. Stephanie Fenty, who is also with the Farmers Market Coalition, says farmers' resiliency became clear when there was a shortage of food at grocery stores.

“A lot of things weren’t available just because the food chain was basically failing during a national emergency," Fenty said. "And that really showed the importance of local food systems because at that time, we saw local food sales dramatically increase.”

There’s more than one silver lining. In Boulder County, going online has opened a wide range of possibilities. A season that would typically end in October has continued throughout the winter months. Now people can order and pick up all year round.

“There are root vegetables – storage crops – crops that keep during the winter," Coppom said. "So there’s onions and potatoes and radishes, and daikon radishes and rutabagas.”

Coppom says farmers markets have grown a lot from the pandemic and he hopes the new systems continue even after we get back to some sense of normalcy – giving more people access to healthy and delicious local food.

“The closer we are as a community to the source of our food, the more we’re tied together and the more meaningful those dinner parties become,” Coppom said.

CHICAGO, Ill. — Cardiac pacemakers require wires to be implanted in the chest to help control the patient’s heartbeat. But now researchers have developed the first-ever wireless, battery-free pacing device that doesn’t have to be removed.

It’s an implantable electrical device that dissolves inside your body after it’s done with its work.

“One of the key features of this system is very thin, silica, nanomembrane. Actually, this is the only active part of this device,” said Yeonsik David Choi, lead developer of the device in the Rogers Research Group at Northwestern University and lead author of the study.

It may sound like science fiction but it’s turning into science fact.

“The idea here is to create sort of an alternative type of temporary pacemaker that doesn't require extraction. It’s purely wireless. There are no leads coming out of the chest,” said John Rogers, professor of material science and biomedical engineering at Northwestern University.

“The thickness is around 300 nanometers,” said Choi.

The razor-thin sliver of silicon could revolutionize the future of temporary pacemakers.

“It's built around what we refer to as transient electronic materials. These are materials that dissolve naturally when exposed to biofluids,” said Rogers.

The device itself would be attached to the heart at the tail end of surgery without needing an external box, batteries, or wires. Charging is achieved through a wireless inductive power transfer.

“Which is essentially how cell phones can be charged by the charging mats, where you can just place your phone onto the mat and power is transferred to power your phone,” explained Rose Yin, a George Washington researcher, and the study’s surgical coordinator.

The biodegradable materials, which include water-soluble silicon, magnesium, and wax, would dissolve over the course of 5-7 weeks.

Biomedical scientists at Northwestern and George Washington Universities have been investigating an alternative to traditional pacemakers for the better part of a decade.

“The current pace technology is not adequate. It's not optimal simply because these wires tend to get dislodged. They can get infected,” said Dr. Rishi Arora, a Northwestern professor of cardiology and co-author of the study.

He says this technology could eliminate the disadvantages of wired pacing and surgical extraction after the temporary pacemaker is no longer needed.

“We have nothing great right now to offer people that need it, that need more than a few days of temporary pacing support,” said Arora. “I think something like this could really help patients in the longer term.”

They’ve already successfully tested the device in small and large animals, and soon could be seeking approval for investigational testing in humans.

“You could also think of it as an electronic form of a medicine in the sense that it's a device that's present only when you need it,” said Rogers. “It's eventually expelled from the body, very much like a pharmaceutical, but it's a piece of engineered technology in electronic medicine.”

Researchers say it will likely be another two years before it’s approved for human testing. But it could be a major leap forward in a more non-invasive approach to keeping the heart ticking.