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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.
...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.
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.
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?
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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.
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.
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
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!
A wide majority of products can be only used a rather small number of times, will typically be bought again shortly after that. In particular, food.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor