On Mon, 17 Mar 2003, Michael Shields wrote: > It adds up, especially in low-margin businesses. Groceries are a good > example; unpacking every cart, scanning, and bagging is an expensive > bottleneck. The process could be streamlined a lot if an entire cart > were scanned at once. > > There are serious engineering problems before we get there; but the > demand from retailers is very real, and so a very real effort will be > made to solve them.
I can see a couple of solutions to the checkout problem. One is to remove checkout counters, just scan the item at the shelf with a card. With rfid this actually becomes a lot simpler, you can isolate items to specific regions of the store. If the item is removed, it had better already be purchased or you get busted. A whole cart load of items responding simultaneously won't work, at least not with 5 cent rfid's of the next few years. In a decade maybe cdma rfid will be 5 cents. Removing the bottleneck of checkout counters would be *very good thing* because most people hate standing in line. Of course, digital cash would be really nice to have for that too! Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
