Whenever my mom asks me to go grocery shopping, I always dread it so much. She buys so much that it feels as if she picked at least one item from each aisle in the grocery store. Not only do I have to load up all the products and put them in the shopping cart for her, the check-out usually takes forever. Waiting in line is a waste of time, especially for an impatient person.
Recently, Microsoft has been working on an evolving project that could potentially cure the wait for checking out products in a grocery store. The technology company Chaotic Moon uses the Kinect system to navigate the cart around the grocery store. This is
Kinect Grocery Cart
from the same Kinect system as we know in games where it senses and detects your body and the motions. This system still detects your body so it can follow you around the store on its own and you wouldn’t have to push it yourself. In addition, this invention would detect and recognize grocery products. The speakers on the system read aloud what products you put into your cart as well. This could be a great new technology that would help the visually impaired grocery shop!
One of the best features that they’ve been working on is the ability to ring up all grocery items using RFID(Radio-frequency identification is the use of a wireless non-contact system that uses radio-frequency electromagnetic field transfer data from a tag attached to an object) tags as each item is placed into the shopping cart. While each item is placed into the cart, the Kinect will tally up how many items there are and display them on the mini screen. You can also, make a grocery list on the screen beforehand that includes the product and its brand so it can
detect exactly the item you need. No need for handwritten grocery lists! Additionally, the Kinect will notify the shopper if they choose the wrong brand for the item that they want or even more specifics like gluten-free products! There are so many benefits but mainly that once customers finish shopping, they don’t need to wait in line for checking out because it’s already done by the Kinect. Also, the company is working on the RFID to recognize the smallest products, especially the items like mini jars that are hard to scan. The company began officially sanctioning developers outside the game industry to begin toying with the system last year in hopes of this new technology.
Hopefully, Microsoft finds a way to improve this technology and fix all of its problems because the Kinect would benefit our shopping experience! I would finally enjoy and maybe even offer to go grocery shopping with my mom on the weekends.
How would the Kinect Shopping Technology benefit you? Do you have any suggestions of anything else it should be able to do? Thanks for reading, leave comments below! 🙂