from Rice University:
Rice researchers, in collaboration with a team led by Gyou-jin Cho at Sunchon National University in Korea, have come up with an inexpensive, printable transmitter that can be invisibly embedded in packaging.
It would allow a customer to walk a cart full of groceries or other goods past a scanner on the way to the car; the scanner would read all items in the cart at once, total them up and charge the customer’s account while adjusting the store’s inventory.
Big box retailers such as Target will eventually need this technology to help them reduce payroll. Internet sales continue to rise year after year cutting into brick and mortar sales. Without technological advances like this they will not be able to grow profits, because of the expense of running a “real” store. Once this technology is improved it will be adapted by retailers. They won’t have a choice.
Good analysis, although it doesn’t bode well for the future of human employment.
The company I work for is already under development to offer RFID reading at our POS terminals and for our warehousing software. Truly amazinf, can’t wait !!