Shopping cart goes high-tech

[UNODRAGONE]

Fuck that little voice in my head! Now I have to worry about this one!


LONDON (Reuters) - Supermarket shoppers may soon be cruising the aisles with "intelligent" shopping carts that warn them if they're buying too much junk food, technology experts say.

While many would be happy enough if they could simply get their trolley to go in a straight line, the high-tech model will be fitted with a computer screen and barcode scanner.

It will read each product's individual code to give customers information about calories, nutrition, ethical sourcing and the environment.

U.S. technology services company EDS outlined the concept in a study paper published this week.

It said the screens would reduce the need for lots of packaging for food, helping stores to tackle environmental concerns.

"Shoppers want barcode readers on their trolleys (shopping carts) to calculate the nutritional content and tell them when they have blown their calorific budget," said EDS's Sion Roberts, director of consumer industries and retail.

"It's high-time that the humble barcode is recognized as a practical and cost-effective solution to consumers' thirst for information."

Research carried out by food industry body IGD on behalf of EDS found that a third of shoppers want barcode scanners fitted to their carts.

Most prefer to get information from labels on the food, according to the survey of nearly 1,000 people.

Some shoppers are already using advanced carts. Trials of touch-screen computers on shopping carts have been trialed in stores in the U.S.

[Necro Mortis]

There is so much that can be done to make shopping quicker. I like the sound of this a lot. The self-service checkouts at my local supermarkets are excellent. It allows one employee to run two checkouts at once and means that customers can scan their own itmes and pay for them however they want.

I was watching something recently where they had smart carts too. People could upload their shopping lists into them and it would then show them where the products were in the store and if they were in stock.
I don't know whether this was on it or not but I thought that as products are put into the cart it would scan a microchip in the packaging and add up all the prices as you went a long. Then you could simply connect the cart to a paying station using a wi-fi connection and it would then allow you to pay for your perchases and be on your way, again reducing packaging and junk. If it's not made already then... PATENT PENDING!

[Dalmatas]

Necro's Smart Cart is the better idea, but they would have to have a guard in the parking lot to keep people from pushing those expensive carts home, just like they push the others home. The scan-as-you-shop method would be great, but how can you keep people from "forgetting" to scan an item or two? Scales like the self-checkout? A conveyer belt, like a Dr. Seuss machine, so that everything rides down into the cart, getting zapped on all sides by scanning lasers?

[Necro Mortis]

Necro's Smart Cart is the better idea, but they would have to have a guard in the parking lot to keep people from pushing those expensive carts home, just like they push the others home. The scan-as-you-shop method would be great, but how can you keep people from "forgetting" to scan an item or two? Scales like the self-checkout? A conveyer belt, like a Dr. Seuss machine, so that everything rides down into the cart, getting zapped on all sides by scanning lasers?

I'm pretty sure that if there was a scanner in the cart it would pick up anything passing through it so you wouldn't even need to scan it, just drop it in the cart. There was also a paper I did on the use of RFID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID) in products (In fact I think this is what I was refering to, not microchips.)

This relies on radio-frequency and allows individual products to be followed from production all the way to a customer purchasing it. This would also mean that if you put your stuff in the cart it would be scanned and then that information would be stored. When you take the stuff you have paid for through an exit the alarm won't go off because the information system integrated into the stores security system would show you have lawfully purchased it and that radio-frequency is safe to leave. However, if a radio frequency that hasn't been paid for passes through the exit the alarms will go off and the automatic machine-gun will be activated.

And yeah, I could imagine a lot of people trying to make off with shopping carts with touch screen monitors on them but the same kind of radio-frequency system can be used with the shopping carts. An RFID perimeter can be set up around the parking lot. Any radio-frequency that is identified as a shopping cart that is found to be leaving the area can be pin-pointed to the exact location using a CCTV system.
I can see a lot of people rejecting this simply because they think it infringes on their human rights and such. It's mainly old men who buy ladies underwear and teenagers who buy Vaseline and dirty mags that don't want their purchases tracked but they have their rights... I guess


What do you think?