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Smart Self-Service Scales
Roland Piquepaille writes "German researchers have developed intelligent self-service scales for supermarkets, able to recognize fruit or vegetables placed on them (photo). The scales automatically recognize the item being weighed and ask the customer to choose between only those icons that are relevant, such as various kinds of tomatoes. The scales are equipped with a camera and an image evaluation algorithm that compares the image of the item on the scale with images stored in its database. Store managers can add items to the database. The scales are now being tested in about 300 supermarkets across Europe."
It would be more useful the other way round: if I told it they were tomatoes at it could figure out exactly what type they were.
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I quite enjoyed the apparent abolition of self-service scales in favor of weighing fruits at checkout. Let's hope they don't make a comeback.
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I for one welcome our new intelligent self-service weighing overlords
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Except that the linked picture shows strawberries on the scales, but the screen shows a choice of all kinds of other fruit and veg, not different kinds of strawberry.
This is just plain silly and useless. If you fail to see why, I am sad for you. Cool software/hardware has its place, but this will just cost consumers more for no gain whatsoever.
Which is better for me as a customer, having someone in checkout that just grabs my tomatoes and enters the price, bags them, or, a stupid robot that makes me do everything. This technology doesn't benefit me at all, it benefits the store. I refuse to use it.
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where is the camera?
We should get a discount for doing all the work and saving them a salary or two. Of course we pump our own gas now and it is just a matter of time until they turn it around and start charging a premium to scan and bag.
I don't know how widespread these are outside the UK, but ever used one of the self-service checkouts that are appearing? Scan item, bag it, scan next item etc...
Great idea. Except that the whole point is to save time, and these things were clearly never tested by someone in a hurry because it's trivially easy to scan and bag faster than the checkout can keep up. Well, it would be except the damn thing refuses to scan item 2 until item 1 has been bagged and it takes forever to register that item 1 has been bagged.
They're only faster if the supermarket is full of technophobic customers and the checkouts have a queue going out the door.
In Slovenia we have those guys in all the large supermarkest, especially during "rushhour" when there's up to five and each has their own scale. Really makes the whole process easier on everyone, but I bet none of those weighers love their job ... who cares though, they're our robots until we can figure out a way to properly replace them with actual robots.
Just a few days ago when I was shopping with my family at a "real" store (maybe comparable to WalMart in the US) in Potsdam (near Berlin), I was confronted with this kind of scale. The scale looks similar to the standard self service scales, but it sports a touch screen instead of the panel with selection buttons. The camera is also included in the touch sceen.
After I had placed a clear bag with nectarines on the scale it displayed a number of selections that it considered the appropriate type of fruit. None of the selections came even close, so I had to select "nectarines" manually on the touch sceen.
Generally this is a nice idea, but it just does not seem to work, maybe also because we always place the fuits in bags before putting them on the scale.
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Half the time, self-checkout scales are badly calibrated. To exacerbate this issue, about half the people who use them don't realize they operate on product weight.
This leads to accusations of theft when people lean on the wrong portion of the machine, or simply out of nowhere because the AC kicked in blowing onto the scale.
Adding yet more application of the scale's reading toward functionality will create even more glitches in this regard.
Additionally, the self checkouts in my area are used at nazi-mart, where half the inventory requires a card not by law, but because the waltons are invasive (explatives deleted)
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We have stopped making things, and now increased automation is rendering the service industry pointless. To be honest, like most of the public, I would rather deal with a machine than another human being, if only because that other human being is inevitably some slack-jawed sack of cynicism and self-loathing who hates their job and thus a large percentage of their existence.
The economy of western Europe, therefore, is developing into one based entirely on producing reality TV shows and suing people for sharing them on the Internet. Hooray.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
it's based on photo scanning now..
we all know image recognition is so much more advanced than weight sensitivity.
a little smear on the scanner (all the scanners ive seen even on the human operated machines are filthy) and it's mistaking apples for oranges, oranges for grapefruits, and pineapples for watermelons.
I stand by my analysis though, and predict utter failure if implemented.
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And that is the whole point. That way they can use less staff there. The process for the customer as a whole takes more time. Often I need to wait for the scale to be free then I need to look for where the selection is. So for the customer it take more time, but the store saves.
Also I have used supermarkets where you do NOT put a sticker on it. The person at the checkout has a scale in the same place where the scanner is and enters the PLU. This is as fast as scanning, while not having the need to scan them myself. (I can still check if I want to)
As for people doing the packaging. I have seen it and it takes me again much more time. I do not care what time I spend at the checkout. I care about the time I spend for the whole experience.
To compare it: I am not interested if you have the fastest computer in the world that does a process 2 seconds faster if I as a user lose 5 seconds by needing more time to enter the data.
And then there is the self-checkout. The only advantage I see is not so much the speed. It is that they can use one person instead of 4 to man them. The same with the scanners you walk around with yourself.
OK, the last two might indeed save me about 5 minutes. It will also give me the not so nice feeling that just put some people out of a job, so I can have 5 minutes more to waste on /.
So I now take my time whenever I go shopping. If somebody runs to get in front of me, I let them. I do NOT use the self-checkout lanes, even if there is nobody there and I do have the technical knowledge.
To not use the scanners you can use is also because I do not use a customer card. They can not link my stuff I buy to the way I pay. The privacy laws here do not allow it.
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When I read the headline I interpreted it as a scale that can repair itself when it breaks.
But then again, that's why I'm an anonymous coward.
My girlfriend unwittingly leaned across one of these scales to reach a bag of apples, whereupon the screen started showing pictures of different kinds of melons. Fairly accurate, I'd say.
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My girlfriend unwittingly leaned across one of these scales to reach a bag of apples, whereupon the screen started showing pictures of different kinds of melons
... You never removed the bar code from your inflatable life partner? :\
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Usually stores do have the facility for the check-out person to enter the code and weigh the fruit themselves at the checkout, but as they only do this when tourists come to town (or the OAPs who forget) they don't remember the codes off the top of their heads and have to spend a while looking them up.
In Australia, it is standard for the "checkout chick" to weigh fruit & veg (or anything else) as part of of the checkout process. The scales are built into the bench/barcode scanner and it takes maybe a second longer than a typical barcode scan.
(Which resulted in a bit of minor confusion and embarrassment the first time I visited a grocery store in Switzerland after we moved here.)
Having seen both systems in action, I'm in favour of having it done at the checkout. It doesn't add any meaningful amount of time, is more convenient for the customer and removes the ability for dishonest people to game the system by deliberately using an incorrect label on their goods.
My usual lunchtime shop has trouble reading BARCODES on half the stuff I buy. Swipe, nothing, swipe, nothing, swipe, nothing... Type in tiny number, beep. Yeah, that's time saving. And now I'm being told computers can tell the difference between tangerines and satsumas? Heck, I can't even do that!
I call shenanigans. Either:
* each vegetable has a secret RFID chip in it
or
* the picture is sent to some outsourced call centre where someone sits at a screen watching vegetables all day and clicking on what they are.
And that is the whole point. That way they can use less staff there. The process for the customer as a whole takes more time.
Actually, I don't think that is what the goal is for the retailer. They've already been able to cut staff using the self-scan systems. I think for the retailer the goal is better accuracy. And not just to prevent theft, its probably also to help order replacements for the right item. I know Wal-Mart at least has a Point Of Sale system in place that automatically reorders whatever is bought. And that was 10 years ago. They probably have the same thing at supermarkets too.
It might not always be the customer trying to cheat the store either, for instance, sometimes I'll buy a tomato and I don't know exactly what type of tomato it is because I forgot to look at the sign over them.
So the scale can send your picture and ID to the FBI for large scale vegetable fraud and conspiracy to fruit theft when your puny human brain can't decide whether the apple on the picture is slightly larger or less reddish than the one you are actually trying to pay for.
I refuse to use self-service checkouts. They have installed two of them in the local Tesco (occupies the position that Wal-Mart does in the UK market).
Every time I go in, a clipboard-wielding junior manager tries to make me use them. I usually just say "No", but next time I've resolved to explain why.
Completely aside from the fact that the implementation is dreadful, the things are designed to do people out of a job, in a town that sorely needs jobs. Two of these things are typically supervised by one worker, instead of requiring two people to man two manual ones. You only spend on capital if you have an expectation of increased quality or reduced labour costs, and I can't see these things increasing quality.
People who work grocery retail are at the bottom end of the labour market, so where are they going to go? I don't feel comfortable helping the the likes of Tesco line their pockets like this. I'm starting to feel close to the line where I stop shopping there (if only they hadn't managed to crowd out all the local greengrocers and fishmongers, which I suppose is partially my fault).
Self service discount? Over here we call it shoplifting :).
Having experienced both, I totally agree.
As you mention, weighing stuff yourself means that you can weigh it, get your label, and then add another tomato (or whatever). (Not that I've ever done that, but the possibilities... What was it that Bruce fella said about shoplifting and security?)
When I first moved to Swiss land I used to forget to weigh stuff and then (not speaking any of the three main languages) had to be embarrassed as I went and weighed whatever it was (holding up everyone behind me).
We have so many plants out there that common people just call them weeds because it'd be too hard to learn names for everything. If you had a hand held device that told you what type of plant you're looking at, you could have names for everything. There is a lot of potential for things like this.
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The problem here as I see it, is unfortunately this:
in the life of being an engineer, anytime you automate something, people lose the ability to do their current job because you can automate it. Mean you're stuck in one hell of a conundrum if people can figure out that you engineered something that caused them to be outdated/lose their job.
Of course the upside is that in a good corporation those same people will be able to do something else beneficial within the company. However for companies such as walmart and others that dont' value emplyoees at all I'm sure they will just let the unneeded people go in lieu of new training.
Depends on the store. In germany they often do it at checkout, also probably at aldi in switzerland. At one particularly annoying store in germany (edeka), you have to type in a 3-digit number at the scale. So you spend a lot of time looking for the place where you got your fruit or vegetable, remembering the number, going back.
These "smart" scales have been around for more than a year now at some Real,- stores, and if they are supposed to intelligently learn, they are apparently still not doing a very good job. Still, anything beats the number system.
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that's definitely not 'redundant'.
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We don't produce any of those things; we produce the plans for such things. Physical manufacture is largely done elsewhere.
Wrong yourself. You better tell my customers that they don't produce those products themselves right here in high-cost Northern Europe. You are making political "points" ignoring the truth or you are simply oblivious to it!
rather than smart computer.
I'd rather have the scale suggest to me (and me confirming or choosing something else) the type of fruit/veg rather than telling me.
As I can quite clearly envision the scenario where scale is wrong (tangerine, kumquat, etc.) and I have to track down some scarce-in-supply worker to actually override the scale (or just accept that it is wrong and deal with what ever that means in price).
It is much more suited for computerised decision support than computerised recognition. It would probably be right in the majority of cases (the easy ones) and when it comes to the difficult ones, the customer usually knows what (s)he is buying anyway...
What is involved in having every item of food tagged so that you simply bundle it all in bags and then as you go through the checkout it adds it all up and gives a total to the checkout monkey? I know fruit and veg might be difficult, but I've always thought that handling every single item and pushing it past a laser if very inefficient. I thought we were living in an age of technlology? Where is super cheap mass RFID at the moment?
Or, they could just put a bar code on the fruit stickers... nah, that's too easy.
stuff |
This is Slashdot. We don't care if the checkout line is sentient. What we really want to know is..
Does it run Linux?
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This is just another move towards getting rid of cashiers and making the customer check their own goods. This trend has been increasing in the last the year or two. Now there are more self serve checkouts at Home Depot, Lowe's, Sam's and other stores.
Eventually they will have huge warehouses where the customers never see a live person that works there. Combined with ATMs and fast food drive up windows a person would not have to talk to anyone at all.
Some how I don't think this is an improvement. How can a self checkout improve the customer experience? And just imagine the backups when that item you picked up does not have the barcode on it. Who is going to help then?
I quite enjoy the self service scanners in Tesco, it enables me to rid myself of all my small change on a much more regualr basis, have you ever tried counting out small change at the till while the check out girl sits there with her hand out tutting and looking at the other customers who all then beginn sighing and tutting themselves? It's a nightmare, you would think anything less than a pound/euro isn't real money anymore. On one occasion (not in tesco) while on holiday and trying to rid ourselves of the foreign currency my girlfriend handed over a fist of change and the shop girl actually tutted and held out the money for her fellow till monkey to see! If this is the sort of people we no longer have to deal with then i say roll on self service!
I don't do self checkout. 1. I won't work with a machine that talks "down" to me. If I could shut off the stupid voice...I might, but still, see #2. 2. Its putting some college student or high school kid out of a job. 3. It takes any social interaction out of the equation and I think that's generally bad. 4. It takes longer. If you pay with a credit or debit card, you're purchases are getting linked. If they're not getting linked at the store, they're getting linked somewhere else like ChoicePoint. Ever read a privacy statement? You don't have any.
This would be good in the capacity of a suggestion type thing, like predictive text on your cell phone, but I think it would be wrong far too often to actually narrow your choices. I mean, there are produce items in the grocery that I can't tell apart myself, like most of the green, leafy products, and they are going to write a program to do it? I can't imagine a computer could reliably tell the difference in lettuce and cabbage just by looks, but maybe if Clippy popped in and said, "I think you want to buy a head of lettuce, is that right?"
This would be trivial with RFID stickers. Oh, but I forgot, the paranoid idiots out there are afraid of technology.
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In a supermarket nearby I have found some of these new self service scales.
It takes between 5 and 10 seconds to get a result. And it is more like a lucky guess. In half of the cases the scale cannot identify anything and I have to use the touchscreen. In 30 to 40 percent of cases the computer gives me a choice of three or four vegetables.
Better yet, we use the data for a new CAPTCHA system. "To enter this website, please type the name of the fruit or vegetable in the following photo."
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Honestly, I find self-service checkouts pretty annoying. I don't *want* to scan my own crap. I'll bag it, but scanning it myself is a hassle, and it doesn't save time because I can unload while the cashier is scanning, which means two things getting done at once.
I have resisted using the self checkouts for the sake of speed, and because I think the cashiers provide a service that is worth paying for.
I've had enough of companies cutting thier costs by pushing the work onto their customers. ATMs are OK because they add convience. Self-checkout is NOT OK because it will slow down checkout.
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The problem with self-service scales in the supermarkets I've been to is not that it's hard to enter the item, it's that frequently _the item isn't in the database_. Or the PLU sticker is missing from the item or the shelf tag... and can't be looked up because it demands an exact name match and you don't know whether a sweet Vidalia onion begins with O or V or S.
The premise that it can recognize produce visually is unlikely to say the least. Do you really think it can tell the difference between bananas at $0.69 a pound and organically grown bananas at $1.19 a pound? How about a Fuji apple and a Gala apple?
I'm willing to bet that the system does more to impede legitimate purchases than to facilitate them.
I'm bet that "ask[ing] the customer to choose between only those icons that are relevant" sounds like a smokescreen and a pretext. I'll be these scales really being sold to control-freak store managers who fear that customers are building a better retirement by ringing up expensive orange peppers as cheap green peppers, and is willing to spend $50,000 to prevent a couple of customers a day from bilking the store of $2.67.
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But it introduces the problem of a checkout person trying to figure out exactly what kind of produce is in the bag, causing every single person in the queue to be delayed. If you buy the produce, it makes sense only you get the time penalty. It might only be a few seconds for the person being served, but it adds up in long queues. I like the German way, personally. Quick, efficient, painless. Those ruthless Germans.
Just as long as it doesn't ask me 'Does this make me look fat?'
hehe. I bet Seattle will think twice before investing in this.
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Yeah when I lived in Germany, they always did the weighing at the checkout. I never shopped at the big supermarkets like Real or the super-sized Edekas or Aldis because I lived too far away from the large shopping centres and didn't have a car. I just shopped at the small local stores around the corner. They never really had problems with identifying the produce. If they were unsure they usually referred to a guide with pictures to find the right code. If they still couldn't find it they just asked you or someone else. Didn't take long.
Same deal in Canada. I can't speak for the whole country, and have no idea how its done anywhere else, but in Winnipeg at the various Superstore locations I've been to, they have about 4-6 self-checkout kiosks which have the computer scales built in, but definitely are not smart whatsoever. Real Human Beings® still exist as cashiers in far greater numbers. Safeway seems to get the idea that people are better. Their recent store renovations (to the darker more luxurious look with wooden floors and all that) don't have any of the self-checkout kiosks at all. Maybe their next round of renos will put everyone out of a job, who knows.
For bulk purchases, like at Safeway buying a bag of candies or spices from the bulk bins, you still are asked to write down the number on the twist tie, but if you forget, don't worry about it, they can look it up in their guide. Very easy.
Once in the UK, we tried using the self-checkouts at Tesco and they were the hugest pieces of garbage on earth. The machine supervisor/manager guy basically waited beside us the whole time and constantly had to intervene where the machine screwed up. Double-scanning and not sensing the items in the bagging area were par for the course. Took about 10 minutes extra just to do that while people with full carts who went to the Real Human Beings® after we'd started were already loading their cars before we were finished wasting our lives with relatively few items vs. vastly inferior technology. The least the supervisor/manager could have done was to void everything and take us to a proper cashier to get it done in no time. Hopefully they've fixed those things up by now.
Moral of the story: go see the Real Human Beings® because they are harder, better, faster, stronger.. well maybe better and faster. Plus you can chat with them, or chat them up as the case may be, not have them talk down at you in some stupid disembodied voice. Human interaction is much more pleasant than interacting with a computer. I know this is Slashdot, and that may not be a universally held view, but it is the truth. Even Slashdotters have to emerge from their dens and get some food sometime...
Because people can't stop touching, sqeezing, pressing and fumbling all the fruit and vegetables which lets them get bad much faster.
The exception is the super-expensive fruits that the general public don't touch because they're too expensive.
When I had a greengrocer next to where I lived, I would always buy the stuff there - only the staff was allowed to touch the fruit and as a result, it lasted much longer than anything available elsewhere - even though it was more ripe than usual supermarket-fruit.
I really hate self-service - but mostly because of the other people who can't behave and pretend they are the last shoppers on earth.
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Do you really think it can tell the difference between bananas at $0.69 a pound and organically grown bananas at $1.19 a pound? How about a Fuji apple and a Gala apple?
In either of these cases it will pop up a set of pictures for the customer to select from.
This is not intended to prevent fraud, but to help the customer who can't recall whether the PLU was 637263 or 631263.
I would assume that other retailers do this as well, but they just have a different standard. Walmart seems to expect a line length of 3 to 7. Late at night when fewer people shop, they seem to have less staff and the lines are still 3 to 7 long. I would assume that their level of service was the same before the self service registers were added. I really can't imagining the lines were any worse before.
Can it differentiate between organic and regular produce ? If it doesn't and asks the customer, then good, organic produce will become cheaper.
Yeah, I got some "fruit" for it to try and recognize.
Scanner: "*ding* Tea bags."
Wow! It *is* good!
I have a better idea. How about you go to the checkout stand and let someone else ring up the items. After all, if the store wants my money, they can put a real human there to collect it from me, to answer questions, etc. I can't stand the fact that I have to do all the work of ringing up my items on those automatic machines that say, "Please put the item back in the bag" when I never removed it in the first place. Or, better yet, if they want me to ring up my own stuff, there better be a 10% discount on my entire purchase, because if I'm doing all the work to save them the money of paying a cashier, then I want to save some money too.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
In fact the trend has just started to change again, the transportation prices are rising making it increasingly profitable to produce closer to home.
Just the other day I read an article from the UK about companies moving manufacturing home from China. And don't forget that the same thing is happening in the US [in some areas].
And China is experiencing problems with higher labor costs following a real lack of available manpower. People in China are getting picky about what jobs they take and the wages they get.
I can say almost nobody likes self-check machines. I work for a grocery store an I refuse to use them if I have more than a couple items. Customers can't explain or reason with them. Stores have to devote an experienced cashier to monitor them. Funny thing is though, a halfway decent cashier can process as many items per minute as three self-check machines. A really good cashier can compete with four or five. If you are losing a cashier to babysit the machines, the store isn't scanning any faster in terms of items per minute. In fact, the store is definitely losing valuable customer interaction and, possibly, efficiency. That is, unless, you have six or more self-checks. In that case, you are a Walmart, and you don't care about customer interaction or service, just price and volume. But that's a whole different rant.
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Tonight I saw somewhat local tomatoes for USD 0.75 equivalent per kg. They were ugly, but looked like what I would have grown myself. If I had picked at eye level, I would have gotten Dutch imported ones that look absolutely perfect, but cost $8.55/kg.
They are both red and round, but the expensive ones are a little bigger. Maybe this is why the EU has standards where perfectly good fruit is destroyed because it was a few mm to small or a banana wasn't bent enough. It has to meet an OCR standard. Otherwise, it is like trying to implement OCR for documents from people with bad handwriting.
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
Not quite. I usually shop almost daily, and get 12 items or less, and get out through the line before the guy next to me is done fumbling with the self service machine.
Nice try though.
Funny thing but I encountered such scale in Poland, Szczecin city, but not sure which supermarket. I was watching it closely and it was dectecting food properly most of the time. Cool stuff, which makes shopping more fun :).
No, silly, the liberals are all off weeding their organic gardens with gardening gloves made by disadvantaged youths from developing countries. They wouldn't be so crass as to shop at a store owned by a corporation which only employs part time workers so as to avoid giving them health insurance. Besides, using the self check out supports the union workers who make the self check out as well as those who install them and maintain them. My point was that there are some direct and immediate advantages to the consumer in the self check out, something which your previous post suggested did not exist. Sorry if my response appeared flippant. As a matter of fact, when there is a single line at the register and it gets really long, I do sometimes try to find the manager and ask if they could open another register. There isn't a self check out in West Philly.
I don't work for free. Would you?
Self serve checkouts don't eliminate a job, they eliminate the cost of getting the job done.
When I'm asked by a manager if I wouldn't like to get out of line and use a self serve checkout terminal, I tell them I'll gladly do it, but only for some sort of a discount. I've had this conversation several times, and they all got perplexed in a "we never looked at it that way before" look on their face.
Sure you didn't...
The photos hows strawberries, and the machine suggests all kinds of fruit that have "red" in them.
Sure it's an improvement over the old system, where you always had to chose from 70 or so choices, but it's not that it only doesn't know the difference between roma tomatoes, and regular ones.
Or you do it like in Denmark, you put a "cartoon" picture of the fruit on the scale buttons and press that. Guess thats makes us either really smart or really stupid :)
This is your argument: people who didn't try hard at school shouldn't be allowed to have menial jobs becuase my mates who did work hard at school are struggling to find emplyment. Mate, you're a dick. Your mates struggling to find work has absolutley nothing to do with "layabouts" working in supermarkets unless for some reason your mates had their eyes on the lucrative career that is checkout-drone at the local supermarket and were pipped by people you don't like. I don't think you're a fascist, I think you're a dick. In the small (UK) town where I used to live the counters at the supermarkets were staffed by middle-aged and "retired" folks who needed a little bit of extra income. If you introduce automation they lose their jobs. Why is that a good thing?
The local are mall "HUMA" in St.Augustin uses them for some time, and I am not impressed, to say the least.
Out of curiosity (and because I was shopping), I tried different vegetables and fruits, and about 80% of the time the scale presents a random guess from its database instead of showing that it recognised the item.
I do not expect that it can tell one kind of apple from the other or that it knows the difference between an organic and el-cheapo tomato. But more often than not it even fails to differenciate between basically round and basically long objects (i.e. it took a lime for a cucumber, or presented me everything but potatos for the potato I put under the camera).
And as soon as the fruit or vegetable is inside one of those (transparent) bags they provide, the recognition rate goes terminally downhill. The same problem arises if you put several of one item on the scales (i.e. a handful of potatos). And no, I'm not going to weight and pay my potatos individually ;-)
The only positive aspect is that the menu to manually select the item to weigh is up-to-date. In a tree-like structure, you can choose "fruit or vegetable" (with apples and bananas as extra toplevel items, them being the top selections) and travel down the tree until you reach "Apple, Organic, Granny Smith". The downside is that you need this menu most of the time.