New scanner recognises fruit and vegetable varieties
Japan: New Toshiba scanner could be the end for barcodes
The new technology is a scanner which recognises the item of food - including fruits and vegetables - it is shown, thus removing the need for barcodes.
Barcodes can be unreliable - everyone has experienced the odd occasion when a barcode does not work properly an the shop assistant needs to key in the code manually. It's not big issue, but it does take time and time, of course, is money.
The Object Recognition Scanner works by utilizing pattern and colour recognition technology being developed by the company.
Keiichi Hasegawa of Toshiba, explained that, although the scanner is capable of reconsigning any type of food it is particularly useful when it comes to fruits and vegetables.
“Fruit and vegetables in supermarkets don’t usually have bar codes because they’re put out while they’re fresh, so these items can’t be read at the register using bar codes, which means staff need to input data to record them,” Hasegawa said. “If staff are part-time employees, they may not recognize some items, which can cause delays. We’re developing this new scanner to solve that problem.”
The technology is already well advanced so it can easily identify, not just what sort of fruit it is being shown, but even the variety of apple it is being shown. This is likely to save even more time as assistants will not need to search fro the correct code each time they are presented with a different apple variety.
Source: www.digitaltrends.com
