Shopping Carts Go Wi-Fi

agentk writes "The Boston Globe reports today that area supermarket Stop & Shop is adding computers with Bluetooth barcode scanners, 802.11 networking and infrared positional sensors to shopping carts in one of its stores. 'The Shopping Buddy automatically displays which aisle you're in, what's on sale there, and what you bought the last time you strolled through.' Most Stop & Shop stores already have automated self-checkout lanes. Is this the future of shopping? What will the impact be on privacy, the cash economy, and the experience of shopping in general?"

Comments

Human Contact

[phritz]

It occurred to me, as I was reading this article, that in the Shopping Experience of the Future(TM), we're moving increasingly towards a society where we don't have to interact with any other people. In this new model, you can go to the store and don't need to talk to a cashier or the nice man at the butcher counter.

Does anyone else agree? Thanks to amazon.com and stop & shop, I can now make all of my purchases without talking to another human being ... That seems significant, somehow, although I'm not exactly sure what it means ...

An interesting tradeoff

[indros13]

By allowing people to scan their own stuff, I would guess that they are risking more theft. The article says that, "Stop & Shop is counting on random spot checks and video surveillance cameras to deter shoplifting." However, there's no equal efficiency replacement for the checker seeing that your cart is empty.

Another thing, I don't know if I would want to be reminded what I bought the last time I passed this section of the aisle. Rarely am I shopping for the same thing two weeks in a row or even two months in a row. Do I really want it to beep every time I pass an item I have purchased once?

Finally, please note that they have issued a challenge to you Linux folk: "The custom-built devices can't run ordinary computer software; they're good for shopping and nothing else." Wanna bet?

Call me a Luddite, but...

[pla]

I do not like more automated shopping experiences.

I do not like the self-checkout aisles, which cannot deal with even trivial deviations from what they expect (You want to buy a single, unmarked apple? Sound the klaxon! We have a troublemaker in self-checkout lane 2!). I do not like always paying with a credit card, or needing to carry a stack of $20's to go shopping (for a $0.50 candy bar? Pah!).

So, call me a Luddite, but I will not use these new carts. If I need to bring my own handbasket to avoid using them, I will. I will do my best to shut off every device I pass that blinks or beeps at me and then spits out a coupon (roughly a 90% success rate so far, they always make it too easy to remove the batteries). I will gather my groceries, and proceed to a human cashier to pay for my purchases. In the event that the store has no human cashiers on a register, I will simply leave my basked of frozen food on an unattended register, and leave.

Hmm.

[starseeker]

This could be cool. What I want my cart to do is:

1) let me enter a search for an item and then tell me where it is in the store. Something more flexible than "punch button of product name"

2) let me upload a shopping list to the cart via USB keychain, and use feature one to give me the most efficient order in which to get the items (or close to it anyway - it might be an NP complete problem to get the most efficient route)

3) Scan the item as it goes into the cart, check it off the list, and keep a running total. Also, take item off the list if I take it out of the cart. Perfect for budget shopping, and the cart keeps track of what's in it without me having to dig through it.

All of these should be possible with current tech. Places like Sam's club should check it out.

Keep the adds to a minimum, preferably none unless the buyer opts to see specials, and no pay on cart option. That would involve wireless transmission of the credit card info, and require encryption. Plus, a person should validate the findings of the cart - this would be a convenience thing for customers as they shop, NOT a replacement for the cashier. Taking away jobs aside (that's seldom a valid reason to avoid a technology) someone would find a way to defeat the system.

And for goodness sake get Linux or *BSD on the things! I don't want Microsoft handling my grocery info! Imagine a blue screen destroying your shipping list 2/3 of the way through a big shopping day.

Re:stop the unions, please

[Saeger]

I'm sick and tired of the whining that 'It'll take away jobs.'

Please post again when it's your job that has been automated away -- as eventually the vast majority will be -- and you find it difficult to find a new one because production has become so damn efficient that only a tiny percentage of the population actually needs to work anymore, and yet the word "welfare" is still considered a dirty word.

It's a fact that one day most people will be technologically unemployed by robotics, AI, molecular manufacturing, etc., where the old "just retrain for a new job" no longer really applies. The question is how society deals with these "useless" people: will the elite just create make-work jobs to keep idle hands busy? Or will the proles demand that the fruits of automated production be redistributed more fairly?

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