Ahhh bummer!  I was hoping for some real high tech here.

But to be honest, I'm quite happy that there is some
human involvement still.  When I walked up to the register
area and noticed no human cashiers, I was disappointed.
Things are definitely getting impersonal nowadays, with
a rapidly reducing percentage of human-to-machine
intervention.

Banks were an early offender, and I have not physically
walked into a bank lobby in a long time.  Videos were
also threatened to be replaced by Pay-per-view and its
cousins, but I still own a VHS recorder and still walk
into the video store and chat with the fine (female) humans.

And now groceries.  Ugh!

Now that I think about it, all the establishments with
fine women are being replaced by machines.  Why don't
they start with welding shops and mechanics?  :-)

Disappointed and biased,
-Neil.



-----Original Message-----
From: pic microcontroller discussion list
[mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Amaury Jacquot
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 1:16 AM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: [OT/EE?]: Is the grocery haunted?


On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 12:12:07AM -0500, Pic Dude wrote:
> At the grocery just now, and they have the new impersonal
> cash registers where you check out for yourself.  Same
> type as I saw at [ex-]Kmart some months back.
>
> So I'm scanning my items, and I think about the 2 mangoes
> I have -- how would it handle these?  Get to it (last item)
> and there's a button that says "produce".  Cool.  It then
> asks me for the label/item number for the produce item,
> which I don't have, but it offers me a button: "No Label".
> So far so good.  Then it asks me to place the item on the
> scanner (which is also a scale), and then comes back to me
> with the message: "Please wait".

I remember seeing these when I was in the states last year...
the registers were set up at the corners of a square and there
was a human that was standing at a desk on the side of the
square closest to the exit lane.
Well, the desk contains 2 monitors, one with a 4 split video,
one for each register, the other a touch screen and, well, the
human interacts with it... that's where the "please wait" comes
into play...

no haunting, nor supa-dupa military vision stuff...

Sincerely

Amaury

> I was expecting one of the attendants to come up, but I
> instead got a message: "Place item in bag".  Okay, now I'm
> confused, but I play along.  It takes me back to the item
> list and there it is:  2 mangoes (4/$1.00) = $0.50.
>
> Perfecto!
>
> But how?  Is there some form of image recognition going on
> here?  I can't think of anything else, other than maybe some
> attendant with a camera helping out by plugging in the correct
> item number for me remotely.
> Or maybe I'll bite into the mango and find a PIC with a
> wireless transmitter sending out an ID signal to the cash
> register? :-)
>
> So where are the gurus of this technology?
>
> Cheers,
> -Neil.
>
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