Slashdot Mirror
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."
I for one welcome our new intelligent self-service weighing overlords
Dawkins Revisited: A person is shit's way of making more shit -- Steve Barnett, anthropologist.
I tried the self scan in a Delhaize in Belgium ... when you go to pay the girl takes everything out of the bag and scans it again. I don't quite see how doing something twice works out faster.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I saw one at woolworths here in Melbourne which crashed to a windows desktop. The staff got a bit upset when I started to play with it. It would have been interesting if there were any test or debugging tools floating around. Perhaps I could have "fixed" it for them.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They should just inject the nectarines with RFID tags when they are packed. As a bonus the customer gets tagged multiple times as well.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
"Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power." -- James Madison
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? :\
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
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.
Self service discount? Over here we call it shoplifting :).
How the hell can someone not differ between a salad and a spice? I'm a sworn meat eater and even I can tell the difference!
that's definitely not 'redundant'.
MP3 Search Engine
My friend used to buy only onions. Coca-Cola onions, chicken onions, etc. Instead scanning the barcode he used to put them as loose items. The cheapest ones were onions. So he always had lots of receipts for several kinds of onions. Funny, illegal but saved him quite a lot of cash.
No he'll need to behave like proper citizen...
No offence, but if going to the supermarket is a social occasion, then you really need to get out more...
I can't stand these systems. I said TomAto. It said ToMato. Then I went and tried to get some PotAtos. It said poTato.
Then I just called the whole transaction off.
Right - and these plants just uproot themselves from the jungles of darkest Peru, randomly arrive in the supemarket and teleport themselves onto the shelves do they?
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
OR ELSE!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.