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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?"
Is when they start dynamically altering prices second to second based on your past purchases, and those of other consumers recently. I wouldn't be surprised if laws are passed saying stores aren't allowed to customize prices.
*equips tin-foil hat*
Bring Your Own Cart.
Did you see what the unions had to say about this technology? I'm sick and tired of the whining that 'It'll take away jobs.' I know I'd go to a store that has such a useful technology. I hate waiting in a checkout line so a union checker can check me out. I want to scan my items as I shop so I can leave quickly. Sure, self-checkout is ok, but this is even better.
Shoppers could steal the Shopping Buddies, but there wouldn't be much point. The custom-built devices can't run ordinary computer software; they're good for shopping and nothing else.
We've heard that before... given a few weeks I'm sure some pimply 16 year old in the netherlands could have a linux kernel on it, using Mozilla to surf the web wirelessly.
What will the impact be on privacy, the cash economy, and the experience of shopping in general?
If you bring a big canvas bag to throw your stuff in, probably nothing for you.
...Bluetooth isn't dead after all.
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 ...
I went down to one in vegas, and even though they had a blue shirt patrolling every other isle it gets boring asking them were every little thing is. The store is way to big to just LOOK for what you want. I was figuring interactive "you are here" maps in terminals on the pillars where the phones are. Nothing difficult about that at all. In fact the more I think of it they should really test the waters with kiosk type maps before pumping money into "smartcarts", if those things arn't perfect in implementation people will get no use from them at all.
I really don't see a big value (to me) in a lot of high-tech on my cart, though. I think this benefits the store more than it benefits me. I don't want extra "point of purchase" ads as I stroll the grocery store. The coupon dispensers are annoying enough.
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?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
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.
If I look out my window I can see a pyramid of shopping carts 4x5x3 (assembled in a crazy patton to connect the security chains and get the £1 deposit back) collected by my fellow students from under the nose of supermarket security people.
Now, imagine if said trolles were a cheap source of WiFi parts as well, ideal for putting in your own projects...
Just need some tin foil to stop them being locatable, and somewhere good to stash the carts after you have removed the WiFi kit - such as the center of your student halls of residence.
Beep beep.
...this technology isn't what we would call cheap and obviously customers are paying for it through increased prices on their products.
Yes, it sounds geeky and cool, but I don't think its really useful. I prefer to save the money or spend it in buying more stuff.
there is nothing different about shopping with this new system then shopping without it. they already can see what you buy (unless you decide not to use the checkout and make a run for it, actually then they'd definatly know what it was you took) , and as for tracking around the store, ever hear of CCTV?
dybia felly dwi a hampster (i think therefore i am a hampster)
Log onto the wireless network and search the web for competitors' prices?
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
This was tried in the late 80s. A chain on long island (Pathmark) installed a grayscale LCD screen on every cart. It communicated wirelessly as well. You could see a store map, your location on the map, search for an item's location, and see aisle specials of the week.
Didn't last more than a few months. I'm guessing it didn't benefit frequent shoppers too much. Maybe it'll work better today.
About 10 years ago, a brand new Schnucks (local grocery store to St. Louis Area) installed something similar on its carts. However, it was basically just a portable ad monitor. It was a BW LCD touch-screen that popped up new specials when you moved to particular locations. It sensed your position from overhead sensors, I'm not sure if they were IR or what, but long story short, they didn't stick around for very long. Maybe this system will have more success because of the automated checkout feature, but I really doubt it.
My experience with self-checkout has been that I'm not nearly as fast as the checker that's been there for years and knows the price codes for all my fruit by heart. I tried to do it a couple of times and because the system has to be designed so that a 5 year old can use it, it seems to take twice as long as it would had if I was a super-user.
Is this before or after you pay for the items? Isn't it true that, one you pay for the items, they are unable to search them?
Just like at China-Mart, If you walk thru the sensormatic and it goes off, you do not have to stop. If you do stop, and they ask to check your bags all you have to do is say no and they will let you go.
Where will all those put out of work by such systems work? How will they earn a living?
/. thinks about this.
I am currious what everyone on
NOT! This was tried over ten years ago by an outfit in Chicago called Videocart. It was a spectacular failure. Well, I guess we'll see if anyone learned anything since then.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
While we're on the subject of grocery shopping, what effects will this have on the use of RFID tags? These carts already have built-in barcode scanners; would it be easier to have embedded radio devices in the food?
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
Would the carts also recommend healthy foods over other less desirable categories of foods? Kind of like a built-in dietician?
Shh.
One employee task that comes to mind is a big row of bicycles (a'la the movie, Soylent Green) that would run the generators producing electricity for the freezers. Employees would enjoy fitness and a paycheck ;)
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
As long as the means to track your purchases is based on some non-personal identifier (such as a customer number on a store card). The "preferred shopper" cards that most supermarkets currently issue don't really care *who* you are, as much as *what* you are. Are you a 20-something single black female, or a 50-something married white male? The personal information (name, address, etc) is only useful for mailing out coupons and such, and most supermarkets don't market by direct mail, they use circular publications. I don't have a shopping card myself, but my wife has three or four of the things. In every case, she just filled out a little piece of paper with statistical information, and they gave her a card. They didn't check her ID or anything, so if you don't want them to know who you *really* are, just use a fake name and address.
So as long as I get an anonymous shopping card, who cares if the store wants to track purchasing trends, if it's going to make the shopping experience better (and I loath supermarkets - mainly because I can never find what I'm looking for without having to traverse half the store)?
The only issue I would have is if the store wants to keep my credit card info on file for some sort of "EZ Pay" system. No, thanks. I don't care if they know that some anonymous, 30 year-old, married, white male buys frozen lasagna and canned corn and mostly shops after 8pm on week nights, but I'm keeping my account numbers in my wallet. They can have their little wireless computer tell the automated checkout machine how much I owe, and then prompt me to swipe my card and enter my PIN, or feed cash into a bill scanner (for the ultimate in anonymity). As long as the anonymous purchasing information is kept separate from the personalized financial information, I fail to see a privacy issue with this concept.
this combined with rfid tags could be used for supermarkets to charge each individual person a different price for items based on a profile of the person indicating how much money they have. pure evil.
1) DOS attack one shopping cart using five others thus rendering all six useless...
2) Create a linux build and replace the shopping carts OS with it. Now you can crack company passwords with your beowulf cluster of shopping carts!
3) wardrive the shopping mall
4) load up the linux build you made in #2 to an old laptop and bring it to the store. bury it outside the super-mart with some kind of power source (outdoor plug, solar pannles) and have it do your bidding.
5) broadcast over WIFI a change of prices and sales to the shopping carts
6) use your immagination.
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
I couldn't care less about the "The experience of shopping". I welcome any invention that will shorten the time for me to actually get the stuff I'm after.
Several local grocery stores have self-checkout lanes. I tried them a few times and was disappointed. Now I look for the lane that still has a human cashier. The cashier, who does this job for 8 hours a day, is much faster at scanning, ringing up produce, bagging and completing the order. Plus, it's a human being, not some Rube Goldberg contraption from Hell.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
The rugged Shopping Buddy computers are manufactured by Symbol Technologies Inc. of Holtsville, N.Y., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
How much will they have to charge for the cart's deposit before people will not steal them? It'd be nice to take one of those things home with me, keep the bluetooth elements and then ditch the cart in a park (sigh... memories of university... ;) )
Of course, most supermarket discount cards are given to you when you "apply" for them, and you could easily BS the entire application and no one would ever know.
What?
OK, they don't directly change the prices now. But there are so many ways that stores change the price you pay - frequent shopper cards, manufacturer's coupons, sales, those "Catalina" printables at the register that print out coupons based on what you buy - that consumers pay many different amounts for the same items.
Personally, that's fine with me, as I've gotten pretty good at working coupons and sales
I have blog like everyone else
I usually avoid the self checkouts. I feel kind of stupid, since I'm young and work in IT, I'm supposed to love cool technology. But I also use coupons, and it never fails that at least one of my coupons won't scan, prompting me to have to summon someone over to fix it. Usually winds up killing any extra time I would have saved over waiting in line. I would rather just deal with a person in the first place.
I have blog like everyone else
The "preferred shopper" cards that most supermarkets currently issue don't really care *who* you are, as much as *what* you are.
True. My local grocery chain recently installed new POS equiptment that prints Thank you "insert name of customer." Only then did I realize that the name on it was not mine, but rather the Dutch foreign exchange student who had been one of my roomates 3 years ago. Must have accidently switched cards somehow, and it never really mattered. Though it is impressive that he's saved nearly $300 in bonuscard savings despite being on the other side of the globe for the last 2 years.
I have blog like everyone else
What will the impact be on privacy,
/South Park, bigger longer and uncut.
the cash economy, and the experience
of shopping in general?"
Should we blame the government?
Or blame society?
Or should we blame the images on TV?
You cant fight in here, its a war room!
They tried this in a Pavilions near my Grandma's house about 10 years ago. Granted, the technology wasn't fantastic at the time, but it was there. It was "cool" for a while, until you realized that it was just telling you a bunch of crap you didn't want to know. It was a bit buggy too, as anything new tends to be. Granted, it didn't keep track of what you bought, only where you went, but it came off as utterly useless and they removed these "features" from the carts within a couple years.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
GPS navigation is great on the shopping cart, but all the traffic in some stores might require some stoplights at major intersections.
To be serious, however.... As often as i see stolen shopping cards around cities, it may not be such a great idea to invest so much money into them.
do() || do_not();
My wife calls me from the store: "Honey, why is the shopping cart telling me 'The last time you were here, you bought condoms!'? I don't remember buying condoms... and besides, I'm on the pill!"
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
It failed miserably. The system was called smart cart or smart shop or something lame like that. They had little 9" black and white LCD screens on the carts and heavy ass lead acid batteries in the bottom. The screens had infrared sensors and there were transmitters hanging above the isles that'd beam updated data as you walked down then. Lots of blurry little animations and stuff. I never found it useful.
The reason the program failed is because the local kids smashed them all for the fun of it. It doesn't matter that the hardware won't run anything useful, people like to break stuff. A steel shopping cart in itself isn't that fun, but if it's got electronics on it to smash, it's alot more appealing to the bored and destructive.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
"George, you missed one!"
What about the Kroger Plus Card, and the equivalent that every other store has? It allows your purchases to be tracked on a per-capita basis and material to be directly marketed to you. This is no more an invasion of privacy than the Kroger card.
Kudos to the con artist who convinced somebody that they were a) employable, and b) had a good idea.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
How could this possibly be used maliciously? It could be used to people's advantage. Say you get a plastic card with a unique identifier, and it tracks what you buy and such. You swipe that card, and it will know what you bought last time, and could offer discounts to things you buy often. As long as you aren't buying clorox, ammonia, and loads of sugar everyday, you should be fine. As long as they don't take your address and sell it to vendors and such to know what you like, it should be fine, so long as they don't store you address and such with your unique ID. Heck, maybe they will even make a system that uses cash like a vending machine, and give you "credit" on your store card, and you can always put more money on it if you don't want to use a check/credit card. It is good to wait for the system rather than to bash it before it comes. If things get bad about information being stolen, maybe a law will come into play, but lets not try and cross the privacy bridge until it comes.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I use Handyshopper for PalmOS: http://www.freewarepalm.com/database/handyshopper- english.shtml
I keep track of the last price I paid for each item, and the aisle I found the item in.
The only thing that would make life easier for me is if the shop would regularly publish a complete list of what items are in which aisles. Especially when they change their aisle layout every 6 months to "enhance the shopping experience" (ie: make you walk past everything again in order to con you into a few impulse purchases).
It's frightening to think that the shop would want to keep track of which items I buy - as other people have pointed out, the store could optimise their prices for maximum profit from each customer. Though I wonder how easy it would be for them to distinguish between the buyers who always buy the one brand, regardless of price, and buyers who "comparison shop" and buy the cheapest product that they trust to be of adequate quality.
That is what sturdy well-built equiptment, security camera, and law enforcement is for I suppose.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Great... first exploit's discovered, Shopping Buddy AP is hijacked, and i'll be kindly informed while shopping that there's a "0wN3d s4L3 0n ai5le r00t"
I do like the idea of "Bring Your Own Cart," so long as I don't get hassled for bandwidth shoplifting after I leave.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Imagine it, teched out bag ladies talkin to their shopping carts. Anyway, the privacy implications are the same as those grocery store saver cards, if you're so concerned, don't sign up for it
It's no different than using your "Shoppers Club Card" when you interact with a (minimum wage) cashier at each and every supermarket, walmart, kmart; the list goes on.
Borrow someone elses tinfoil hat (card) and this data is inaccurate.
If it truly saves me time and minimizes my interaction with a disgruntled employee, I'm all about it.
Question to the person who modded parent:
How can it be "overrated" if no one has modded it up?
Here's hoping you get meta-moderated into the godless oblivion from which you came...
One day no one will be able to buy or sell anything without that chip in their right hand or forehead. Be careful what you wish for.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
I work for Ahold, the parent company of Stop & Shop. I was involved in the development of this project. We're definitely counting on it to bring in more business. The Boston Globe article is good, but doesn't talk about some of the more interesting technical aspects of the project. (Of course, we probably won't tell them for fear of the word getting out to the competition.)
"Politicians always tell the truth, when they're calling each other liars."
I sure do hope they encrypt all their information in something a little stronger than wep. Otherwise one laptop shopping trip later, and you could have the info of everyone in the store.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
You're an asshole.
It is one thing to make a decsion not to use coupons provided for you, for something you are goint to purchase, it is another to make it so the next person can't.
I like them. Go in to get something, and then get a discount. bonus.
Of course, if you are so weak willed as to let a piece of paper to offend you, or perhaps they 'make' you by something you don't want?
to sum up:
you're an asshole.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I live in Revere, just outside of Boston. There's 3 Stop & Shops nearby. Although their prices are higher, it's definitely a tech-lover's dream to shop in. Also nice if you're just impatient or don't like people :).
I think it was around 94 or so that Kroger did this. It wasn't .xx, but each cart had a little greyscale screen and TONS of antenna's in the ceiling.
As you went down aisles, you could see what was on sell around there, or you could use the cart to see where a certain item was. It was a little slow, but it worked...remember using it quite a bit as stuff is never where I'd expect it.
The problem - after about a month, finding a cart that had a working screen was nigh impossible. Hopefully the new ones will be a lot more rugged.
Checkout clerk: "Hi, Joe! How's the meth lab goin'?"
The moderator felt it sucked so bad it didn't even deserve the 1 it started with. And I can see this.
Just because there wasn't any other moderation done before the overrated was given doesn't mean that overrated is wrong. Maybe not the best choice--I'd have picked something else--but it applicable.
it is another to make it so the next person can't.
I resent advertising in all forms. Small blinking boxes that spit coupons at me do nothing more than advertise a product to me, and to everyone else passing by.
At that point, they already have me in the store. I already know what I intend to buy. I do not buy what I do not intend to.
So you would accuse me of having so weak a will that I must disable such ad-dispensers to prevent my giving in to their temptation? No. Quite the opposite. I have no problem at all ignoring them, but realize that others do not do so well.
Do you have an elderly grandmother, one who believes that anything they can get on sale, they must buy? Many people do. I do. I disable such machines for them, not for myself, and not specifically to annoy you. I neither know you, nor care enough about you to bother taking action to annoy you.
Go in to get something, and then get a discount. bonus.
TANSTAAFL. You pay, one way or another.
to sum up: you're an asshole.
Better an asshole than a sheep. Baaaaah.
How will this affect the 98% of /.ers who shop at Save-U-Foods or still live in their parents basement? Most Slashdotter are out of work according to their stories (all Bushes fault) or are so rich they eat out all the time. Which is it and how will this actually effect them?
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
That too wide of a generalisation. All Utopias break IF they ignore human nature. For example, if you try to build a communist society while having a poor agrarian economy with miniscule GDP per capita, voluntary labour will not provide enough wealth to support everyone. Those countries that ignored this simple fact (Soviet Russia in early 20th century, North Korea, etc.) broke. But if you design your Utopia to take into account the reality (including human nature), then there is no reason why it should not work. Take Disneyland, for example. :) They work within the limits of human nature and technology and they do provide a good (almost utopian in some sense) experience. :) We only need to take the concept further. :)
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Which I mentioned in my post, and also noted that most supermarket discount cards double as your check-cashing card. I'll say it again -- your 'solution' is fine as long as you never write checks at the supermarket.
There isn't much point in stealing a common, ordinary cart either.
What about using a shopping Cart as a Percussion Instrument? I've only actually used a shopping cart once, and I didn't actually find it in a store. I was participating with a band at the time and there happened to be a shopping cart a couple blocks away from the venue. I had intedned to destroy the shopping cart by the end of the show but those darn things are pretty strong. I was able to do hardly any dammage with a crowbar, and could only take out a few of the little thingys with a hammer. Maybe if I had had a sledgehammer I could have done real dammage.
Anyway, when I first started reading this article I was wondering if they were going to use the wifi to prevent shopping cart theft. You know, track them down. And I'm thinking, what's going to happen to the proud tradition of using a shopping cart in experimental music.
Shoppers could steal the Shopping Buddies, but there wouldn't be much point. The custom-built devices can't run ordinary computer software; they're good for shopping and nothing else.
Actually, the shopping buddies themselves might be interesting in music. Banal shopping buddy advice would be very fitting in some music.
SSSShop as usual, and avoid panic buying.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
I'm sure they want this technology in part because of the likelihood of a consumer using it incorrectly and buying 4 cans of beans but taking home only 1.
A couple of those mistakes a day could make the margin for the store.
...before this becomes the place where telemarketers get you. You're reaching up to get the same damn peanut butter you've been eating since you were four and the screen flips over
"hello, mr. [insert mangles last name here]. Would you like to switch your long distance and get a coupon for two dollars off your Skippy? I already have your information in my computer, just press the blue button to switch caller services and press the light blue button to not switch services."
Then the government will have to register: donotcallmyshoppingcart.gov
s'wut i sed.
I hate waiting in a checkout line so a union checker can check me out. I want to scan my items as I shop so I can leave quickly. Sure, self-checkout is ok, but this is even better.
In addition, legions of first-time, hormone-raging teenage boys will be able to buy condoms without the requisite embarassing encounter at the checkout booth.
(Not to mention doting husbands buying items for 'feminine protection' for their wives.)
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.