The general idea is to use something like UHF RFID to scan the whole shopping cart at once (there are even UHF RFID tags that can interoperate with EAS systems). The technology exists and is suprisingly cheap and is used by some some clothing retailers. And that points to the main issue: you have to somehow apply the tags to the items, that is easy to do if you work closely with the manufacturers and only sell your own brands, but somehow non-trivial for something like grocery store.
In theory there is an standardized mapping of the whole GS1 labeling system onto UHF RFID and the only thing that prevents universal deployment is some kind of critical mass. Somewhat surprisingly the standards even take into account the privacy issues inherent in that and the tags do not have fixed physical address (unlike HF RFID/NFC with 1wire-style deconflicting UIDs) and the contents can be progressively masked out, with command to completely disable the tag being mandatory.
On the other hand, first demonstration of that I can remember was by Siemens in 1991, so there is probably another 30 years to go for that to become widespread :)
dfox|2 years ago
In theory there is an standardized mapping of the whole GS1 labeling system onto UHF RFID and the only thing that prevents universal deployment is some kind of critical mass. Somewhat surprisingly the standards even take into account the privacy issues inherent in that and the tags do not have fixed physical address (unlike HF RFID/NFC with 1wire-style deconflicting UIDs) and the contents can be progressively masked out, with command to completely disable the tag being mandatory.
On the other hand, first demonstration of that I can remember was by Siemens in 1991, so there is probably another 30 years to go for that to become widespread :)
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
mewpmewp2|2 years ago
Although it sounds a bit too much for a store, technically it could be done.
mbork_pl|2 years ago
- Sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
throwaway290|2 years ago