Smarter Shopping Carts

IBM will be rolling out a "smart shopping cart" that will help give suggestions and as well as alert shoppers to discounts. Users will just swipe a card through the cart's reader, which may eventually interact with shelves, so customers will see "an ad chicken soup as the person heads down the soup aisle." That's very HAL from 2001 meets Minority Report. But as this is Big Blue's effort to help grocery stores remain competitive with Wal-Mart, Gothamist just says, "Good luck." The Post also notes that other supermarket tech products to be rolled out include, "Veggie Vision, which with its digital camera and a library of hundreds of pictures of vegetables and fruits can determine what is being placed on its scale. It then weighs and prices the items." Gothamist predicts these smart readers will never see the light of day in New York.

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By Jen Chung in News on October 2, 2003 2:08 PM

Comments [rss]

dave p

Grocery stores are in a crisis as they have been for about the last seven or so years. Having done some work for a certain east coast chain based out of boston I can tell you that they are at the point where they will try anything. Here's the deal though, these stores forget that people actually cook with the food they buy. How about being able to tap a couple of names of dishes you want to try into that cart computer and it pulls up the location of all the ingredients you need and how to make the dish you want. And get the food network to do the content. That ones for free, but if you are the CEO of a large grocery chain with lots of money, you obviously need me... www.statementdesigns.com

callalillie

How hard is it to look at a price per pound and then weigh your produce on a standard scale? Do we really need computers for this? Geez.

callalillie

They had something like this on shopping carts at supermarkets when I was in high school (about 10 years ago). They were quickly stolen. Actually, come to think of it, I was probably one of the people who took part in stealing them.

Nickelass

There's a McDonald's on Fulton that scans customers for atherosclerosis to determine how many Big Macs can be safely consumed.

Jake of 8bitjoystick.com

Still no cure for Cancer.

... a Fark Joke

doshin

Though I am likely the only gothamist who would ever consider going to a restaurant with the word 'Chicken' let alone, 'Popeyes' in the name, the Popeyes on 46th Street has a similar interactive display. It spares the register person the need to count out change and also tells you that you can get another bucket o' wings for pennies more. I don't remember if it calculates the fat and calorie content of your meal. So the technology is closer than you think.