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Smart Self-Service Scales
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Aug 18, 2008 04:56 AM
from the ready-for-my-closeup-mr.-demille dept.
from the ready-for-my-closeup-mr.-demille dept.
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."
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Too bad.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too bad.. (Score:4, Insightful)
But given the level of knowledge of the average checkout person, this might be more useful at the tills - having to explain to the staff what 'fennel' or 'parsnip' (I kid you not - it actually happens) is can get kind of frustrating after a while.
I can see this technology helping the checkout staff - of course, staff training might help as well (looking at you, Tesco...)
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Re:Too bad.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Around here, the cashiers don't have to know what it is. Just throw it on the scale and type in the PLU code that's on the sticker.
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I think they are talking about fruit and veggies you bag mate, the ones without any stickers. There is no associated code on the bags and the attendant has to know the type of food before weighing it.
This device could help identify the various types that look similar. Although I gotta wonder how it's gonna handle the difference between a McIntosh and a Red Delicious apple. From the article it seems that it will just identify "apple" and then give the user choices. Which makes me wonder how much more useful
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I don't know who they pay to do it, but over here (in New Mexico, anyway) the grocery stores have nearly every piece stickered. Every last apple, orange and peach. And all the veggies, too. Our cashiers can be (and often are) blithering idiots.
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Yeah. Daikon in my case. Isn't that just an indication these people _won't_ be retrained as rocket scientists? I hate auto-check-outs and never use them. More work for me, I assume more profit for the supermarket instead of lower prices, and I get to pay for somebody's unemployment/retraining. And, to be honest, you go back to the same place every week, there is the sociological angle as some of them become "familiar strangers". Why do I want to crap on them?
Nonetheless, "reprogramable" object recogni
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Re:Too bad.. (Score:4, Interesting)
You'll sure as hell notice the difference when cooking though!
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that no such device exists not because we can't build the device but because there is such a paucity of taxonomists and so many varieties of plant life that we don't really have a bead on how much is out there. If you can't build a database, having an interface for it is useless. Data first.
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Re:Too bad.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not shown in picture (Score:5, Interesting)
I really hate self service scales.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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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here in Switzerland, self service produce weighin is everywhere. People accept without comment, and indeed seem to have nothing against it.
I suspect these devices will see much broader deployment in Europe than the US.
Re:I really hate self service scales.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Stores that do this, too, just don't understand that the whole reason people do retail these days is because of the people. A supermarket is a social occasion, and, actually talking to a checkout person for 5 seconds is, well, a human experience. I was loyal to my Wawa (a convenience store) for the longest time largely because the person who worked there took 2 seconds to throw in a sausage egg and cheese into the oven for my wife when they had run out of the ones they'd already made. You can't get that kind of flexibility out of a robot.
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Re:I really hate self service scales.. (Score:5, Insightful)
TO you it may be a social occasion. For me, its a once weekly annoyance. I want to get in and out as fast as possible, and get on with my life. Anything that shaves time off is appreciated, and these sound like they'd be great when combined with self-checkout lines.
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No offence, but if going to the supermarket is a social occasion, then you really need to get out more...
Self service discount (Score:3, Funny)
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I like the self-checkout, it's fast and convenient. Kroger's works great, Walmart's isn't that good (i dislike the store a bit too, tbh).
But the small discount is probably doable if we take the money saved and convert it. Let's say they convert 2 normal lanes into 6 self-checkouts. That removes 1 employee (still need one to oversee the self-checkouts). Let's say 9 US dollars an hour is saved. You could get a discount of 15 cents US per minute. Ah, but wait, there is 6 self-service lanes which means yo
A great idea but bound to be executed badly (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:A great idea but bound to be executed badly (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There you would go to one person they would select the items you wanted from behind the shelves and place them in a basket, this would then be passed on to the second lady who would then total up your costs and give you a paper listing your total, the basket would then be passed to a third lady who would wrap up your items and place in bags you provided and that would finally be passed to th
Re:A great idea but bound to be executed badly (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm usually the guy who's standing there muttering "C'mon, c'mon!" under his breath whilst waiting for the damn thing to recognise that I really have scanned my purchase and placed it on the checkout roller. The annoying thing is you could see how it could be really great - better scanners, faster recognition: swipe, bag, insert card and you're done.
(Thinking about it, having self-checkout that's a bit of a pain to use unless you're slightly geek-savvy might not be a bad thing - keeps the queues down for us)
On a related note, to those of you who also buy clothing at supermarkets, bear in mind the self-service tills neither offer to remove the security tag from clothing, nor remind you that there's one present. Happily, there's lots of guides on the internet that'll walk you through removing these things at home using nothing more complex than a butane lighter.
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Re:A great idea but bound to be executed badly (Score:5, Funny)
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"Please remove your item from the scales"
WTF.. there's nothing on them
"Please put your items in the bags to the left"
I only got a sandwich and a can of coke!
"Please put your items in the bags to the left"
*hrmmm*
"Please remove your item from the scales"
*cancel*
I hate those infernal machines!
My first real world experience (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:My first real world experience (Score:4, Funny)
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Bye bye service industry (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bye bye service industry (Score:4, Interesting)
I will start using self checkout when they start giving me a discount on my purchase for the money they save on a cashier. Until then I'll keep on using the cashier lines, that is while they still exist.
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My girlfriend... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Melons? (Score:5, Funny)
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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Doomed to Fail (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Doomed to Fail (Score:5, Funny)
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Refuse to use them (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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Two of these things are typically supervised by one worker
In the Tescos I use, it's generally more like 1 worker for 6 or 8 of these, and quite often there's no-one there at all (there is a button you can press to call for assistance).
I refuse to use them too, for exactly the same reasons - they're taking jobs away from people who can probably work in very few other places. That probably makes me a Luddite; so be it. I'm not opposed to technology, but I am opposed to the relentless effort by most companies
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...the things are designed to do people out of a job, in a town that sorely needs jobs.
Since when do we owe these losers jobs? You should have seen the kids at my brother's old school. None of them gave a shit about their GCSEs, despite (because of?) the fact that they were going to be leaving school straight after them. They couldn't be arsed to work and seemed to think that the world owed them a living. I always wonder what percentage will grow up to look back on their GCSE exams and realise that they should have worked harder.
Most of my friends on the other hand have worked their arses of
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At least in the US, grocery checkout staff are far from the bottom of the labor market. I used to think it had to be the lowest job imaginable, but then there was a major strike of grocery workers in Southern California a few years ago. There was a lot of discussion in the newpapers about their wages, benefits, etc. and it turns out they make decent wages (1.5x to 2x minimum wage) and have good benefits -- they were mostly striking over the details of health insurance. So I was mystified why they were st
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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.
Yet another instance of the Broken Window Fallacy [freedomkeys.com]. Yes, increased efficiency may put these individuals out of a job. But it also means that the grocer saves money, and we do too. That money doesn't just disappear from the economy, we spend it on better things. Maybe we go out to eat more often, and maybe the owner of the grocery can afford to add on to h
Bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
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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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
Re:Twice the time, twice the frustration (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Twice the time, twice the frustration (Score:4, Informative)
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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Untrue. They will not reduce the wait time. They will reduce the staff. So instead of 10 people doing checkout, they will have only 8.
It will indeed reduce your time at the checkout, but it will not decrease and perhaps even increase your total shopping experience.
Stores want you as long as possible in their store. It will make you buy more. If you then have a perceived time gain (not a real one) that is even better.
O
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Maybe I could open a shop where every product has approximately the same cost per unit mass, then just charge customers by the kilo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_store [wikipedia.org]
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Re:From me (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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