Self-checkout is supposed to make things a lot faster for customers, but unfortunately, there are cases when they take advantage of the system. An AI self-checkout cart could be the solution. The cart has been named Caper and it should be able to scan your shopped items automatically.
“If you walked into a grocery store 100 years ago versus today, nothing has really changed. It doesn’t make sense that you can order a cab with your phone or go book a hotel with your phone, but you can’t use your phone to make a payment and leave the store. You still have to stand in line,” explained Caper co-founder and CEO Lindon Gao.
How does it work?
The card comes with a weight sensor and three image recognition cameras which will help it identify the products. There is also a credit card swiper, as well as a built-in barcode scanner. It appears that customers which buy from stores using these carts tend to buy 18% more.
People can scan the items and then pay using the cart with a card swipe or via Android or Apple Pay. The receipt is automatically emailed to them. At the same time, the cart takes 120 photos and the products are weighted.
In the future, customers won’t have to scan the items themselves. The cart will automatically detect the products using image recognition and the weight sensor. This means that you would just throw the items in the cart, pay for them and go home. The cart also uses the existing security feed of the store in order to prevent shoplifting.
Its co-founder hopes that this will change how retail works. “I don’t have an altruistic reason, but I really want to put a dent in the universe and I think retail is severely under-innovated,” Gao explained.
Nora Reynolds is a major in biology and a minor in Biological Basis of Behavior, writing about science in general. She also likes to try new gadgets and sports about the AI new era.