Inside Walmart’s Secret ‘Kepler’ Store for Testing Tech

At first glance, the small Walmart store in the New York suburb of Levittown seems unexceptional, but hovering above the aisles of water bottles, pet food and cookies are clues to an important technology experiment the giant retailer is conducting.

A halo of cameras hangs above shelves throughout the store, the sheer number of which—roughly 100 devices in each of eight aisles—suggest these are no ordinary surveillance cameras. In fact, the Levittown store is a laboratory for Walmart’s Project Kepler team, which is developing high-tech store concepts for the retailer to test cashierless checkout, among other applications, the company confirmed. Walmart is using the cameras to test the accuracy of its systems for automatically identifying the items shoppers remove from shelves, said one of two other people who confirmed that Levittown is part of Walmart’s Kepler team efforts.