Monday, March 26, 2012

Optical scanner could speed up sales by skipping barcodes ...

Retail futurists have long said that RFID tags may one day replace barcodes on individual products, opening up faster check-out times and providing retailers with more accurate inventory records. But could cameras integrated into point-of-sale systems make barcodes obsolete sooner?

Toshiba Tec, a Toshiba business arm that sells point-of-sale systems and printers, is developing an optical recognition scanner that would recognize each product based on what it looks like rather than by scanning a barcode. A major selling point is that it would recognize fruits and vegetables. Since they are not generally barcoded,  employees usually need to key in a code each time they ring up produce items. This would eliminate that step and could even differentiate one type of apple from another, according to a news report on Diginfo.

The scanner uses color and pattern to recognize each item, building up a database to pull from. Toshiba demonstrated the technology early this month at the Retailtech Japan trade show.

The system needs to be fine-tuned and at present might not win any speed contests against a seasoned, fast-fingered sales clerk. Plus, a hybrid approach, where sales clerks could switch between barcode scanning and using the optical recognition software, would likely be the best approach. Scanning a box of cereal is pretty easy and fast. But optical recognition could beat out barcode scanners for products with flexible packaging, such as a plastic bag, since the barcode is easily obscured or bent, rendering it unreadable.

Via: Forbes and Diginfo

Image: Flickr/yamrock83

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