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It is amazing to me that this is the technological solution to eliminating scanning barcodes at check-out lines. The obvious alternative is RFIDs, i.e., just p

It is amazing to me that this is the technological solution to eliminating scanning barcodes at check-out lines. The obvious alternative is RFIDs, i.e., just push your cart through a scanner like airport security and all your items appear on the display. (The "automatically bill your Amazon account or credit card" part is optional either way.) From talking to a couple supply chain people, the best explanation I have heard for why RFIDs aren't ubiquitous, even though they now cost less than a penny (EDIT: I'm wrong, more like 7-15 cents), is that barcodes are too entrenched; RFIDs aren't nearly as useful until everything has one (since if you have to barcode scan half your products, and they are intermixed with with the RFID'd products, you might as well scan them all), and even retailers like Walmart weren't able to pressure all their suppliers to switch at once. I wonder if this could have been fixed years ago with a collective-action solution like a stronger industry standards body or government regulation. EDIT: Huh, could have sworn the cheap passive RFIDs cost less than a penny now, but apparently they are still 7-15 cents. That would explain a lot. Presumably the price would fall quite a bit if every product in America had an RFID on it, but we're not there yet. https://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/show?85 https://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/show?85

goatlover 7y ago
Problem is some people still prefer or need to pay in cash. Maybe I don’t want my shopping habits collected. Maybe I get paid in cash and don’t have a card. There’s lots of different kinds of shoppers.
michaeltbuss 7y ago
There's no way a cart full of goods will scan properly if you roll through a scanner. RFID scanners don't handle RFID tags being stacked very well.
- kweks 7y ago
  This is an area of extensive research ("anti-collision") and a solved issue. Even decades old protocols support interacting with a plurality of tags simultaneously. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singulation (Edit: added wiki article discussing anti-collision, which specifically references grocery examples)
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  Apart from RFID, how many cameras would be "reading" everything and from how many angles? Will bluetooth be always on to track movement and where we paused and for how many seconds? Just from these two technologies the "machine" can see that I picked one bag of crisps, one soda (oops wrong flavour I put it back and got the other flavour)(machine saw this and made the change). RFID would only validate at the exit. As for the cost 7-15 cents per RFID tag: -cash management costs. A lot. If you only do e-payments then you save from that -10 cashiers cost a lot (mistakes, skimming also costs) Just from these two cost-cuts a super market can cover the cost to RFID everything in the store. Also the fact that a retailer (I am thinking Carrefour of Sainsbury's that move millions of items per day can get far better prices on tags).
- m4rtink 7y ago
  Maybe the RFID chips in question are just too low end ? I have read an article about race timing chips runners have in their badges during a marathon and they can apparently handle large number of runners, about 50 per second: http://www.righto.com/2016/06/inside-tiny-rfid-chip-that-runs-san.html http://www.righto.com/2016/06/inside-tiny-rfid-chip-that-run...
kweks 7y ago
While I agree with you totally, you would be surprised the extent to which RFID has permeated almost every market. It's often not consumer facing, or simply invisible (there's a very good chance your shoes have a chip embedded in their sole...) but there are wide scale, functional examples in retail of exactly what you describe today. Decathlon, for example, a very large EU sporting goods store has this technology: RFID tags are baked into every product. You fetch your products, throw them all into a basket at checkout, and it instantly "scans" them all.
tootie 7y ago
There are RFID based shopping experiences, but I think it's too easy to hack. An RF-shielded shopping bag makes theft too easy. I'm also not sure how accurate the readers are when tags are all piled together.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  If you're just worried about customer's bags, it's pretty easy to say customers have to shop with the store carts and can't use their bags until after they've checked out. You could also weigh the bag to make sure the expected weight of the successfully scanned products is in the same ballpark. The collision problem is discussed by other commenters.
julienb_sea 7y ago
RFID are not good enough for this application. In the end you'd still need to take the items out of the bag to scan them, as RFID blocking tech is real, and RFID at a distance doesn't work that well - especially with a lot of different RFID chips involved. It's also very wasteful and time consuming. You'd need to chip every item in the store, which is a LOT of human labor (expensive), plus those chips are essentially throwaway which adds ongoing marginal cost - adds up over time. Amazon's solution is more expensive to spin up, but its a fixed cost. Vastly more efficient long term and vastly more scalable than RFID.
- mkolodny 7y ago
  I was under the impression that Amazon is using RFID for "just walk out". They filed patents for a "shelf with integrated electronics", which mentions RFID as a potential implementation [0]. Does anyone here know for sure whether "just walk out" uses RFID? [0] https://sqoop.com/details/uspto/10064502 https://sqoop.com/details/uspto/10064502
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Slippery_John 7y ago
    If this really is the same tech they use for Amazon Go then no. I'm not sure where they would have hid an RFID chip in the single apple I picked up from their larger store a week ago.
    - mkolodny 7y ago
      Might there have been an RFID sticker on that apple you bought? Something like this one: https://www.amazon.com/YARONGTECH-50pcs-MIFARE-Classic-adhesive-Sticker/dp/B01LZYOR7P https://www.amazon.com/YARONGTECH-50pcs-MIFARE-Classic-adhes...
- jessriedel 7y ago
  > RFID are not good enough for this application. In the end you'd still need to take the items out of the bag to scan them, as RFID blocking tech is real, Like, obviously customers are blocking RFIDs en masse then the tech is a non-starter. I've never heard anyone say this was a serious threat; do you have a reference? If you're just going based on some youtube video proof-of-concept: it's not at all clear that this hypothetical attacks are more realistic than hypothetical attacks I could dream up for Amazon's system. > You'd need to chip every item in the store, which is a LOT of human labor (expensive), I am not suggesting RFIDs as an alternative for Amazon's business contracting with storeowners. I am taking a society-wide view and wondering why suppliers didn't switch from barcodes to RFIDs.
avianlyric 7y ago
Biggest problem with RFID is getting suppliers to add the tags to their products. After all you’re asking them to make a big change to their manufacturing processes. Some companies have managed this, Decathlon is a good example, but normally manage it by owning almost their entire supply chain. Which means they benefit from extreme integration. Basically anything that means universally modify packaging is usually a no-go for most retailers, it’s amazing we’ve even managed to standardise on barcodes.

goatlover 7y ago

Problem is some people still prefer or need to pay in cash. Maybe I don’t want my shopping habits collected. Maybe I get paid in cash and don’t have a card. There’s lots of different kinds of shoppers.

michaeltbuss 7y ago

There's no way a cart full of goods will scan properly if you roll through a scanner. RFID scanners don't handle RFID tags being stacked very well.

kweks 7y ago
This is an area of extensive research ("anti-collision") and a solved issue. Even decades old protocols support interacting with a plurality of tags simultaneously. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singulation (Edit: added wiki article discussing anti-collision, which specifically references grocery examples)
HenryBemis 7y ago
Apart from RFID, how many cameras would be "reading" everything and from how many angles? Will bluetooth be always on to track movement and where we paused and for how many seconds? Just from these two technologies the "machine" can see that I picked one bag of crisps, one soda (oops wrong flavour I put it back and got the other flavour)(machine saw this and made the change). RFID would only validate at the exit. As for the cost 7-15 cents per RFID tag: -cash management costs. A lot. If you only do e-payments then you save from that -10 cashiers cost a lot (mistakes, skimming also costs) Just from these two cost-cuts a super market can cover the cost to RFID everything in the store. Also the fact that a retailer (I am thinking Carrefour of Sainsbury's that move millions of items per day can get far better prices on tags).
m4rtink 7y ago
Maybe the RFID chips in question are just too low end ? I have read an article about race timing chips runners have in their badges during a marathon and they can apparently handle large number of runners, about 50 per second: http://www.righto.com/2016/06/inside-tiny-rfid-chip-that-runs-san.html http://www.righto.com/2016/06/inside-tiny-rfid-chip-that-run...

kweks 7y ago

While I agree with you totally, you would be surprised the extent to which RFID has permeated almost every market. It's often not consumer facing, or simply invisible (there's a very good chance your shoes have a chip embedded in their sole...) but there are wide scale, functional examples in retail of exactly what you describe today. Decathlon, for example, a very large EU sporting goods store has this technology: RFID tags are baked into every product. You fetch your products, throw them all into a basket at checkout, and it instantly "scans" them all.

tootie 7y ago

There are RFID based shopping experiences, but I think it's too easy to hack. An RF-shielded shopping bag makes theft too easy. I'm also not sure how accurate the readers are when tags are all piled together.

jessriedel 7y ago
If you're just worried about customer's bags, it's pretty easy to say customers have to shop with the store carts and can't use their bags until after they've checked out. You could also weigh the bag to make sure the expected weight of the successfully scanned products is in the same ballpark. The collision problem is discussed by other commenters.

julienb_sea 7y ago

RFID are not good enough for this application. In the end you'd still need to take the items out of the bag to scan them, as RFID blocking tech is real, and RFID at a distance doesn't work that well - especially with a lot of different RFID chips involved. It's also very wasteful and time consuming. You'd need to chip every item in the store, which is a LOT of human labor (expensive), plus those chips are essentially throwaway which adds ongoing marginal cost - adds up over time. Amazon's solution is more expensive to spin up, but its a fixed cost. Vastly more efficient long term and vastly more scalable than RFID.

mkolodny 7y ago
I was under the impression that Amazon is using RFID for "just walk out". They filed patents for a "shelf with integrated electronics", which mentions RFID as a potential implementation [0]. Does anyone here know for sure whether "just walk out" uses RFID? [0] https://sqoop.com/details/uspto/10064502 https://sqoop.com/details/uspto/10064502
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Slippery_John 7y ago
  If this really is the same tech they use for Amazon Go then no. I'm not sure where they would have hid an RFID chip in the single apple I picked up from their larger store a week ago.
  - mkolodny 7y ago
    Might there have been an RFID sticker on that apple you bought? Something like this one: https://www.amazon.com/YARONGTECH-50pcs-MIFARE-Classic-adhesive-Sticker/dp/B01LZYOR7P https://www.amazon.com/YARONGTECH-50pcs-MIFARE-Classic-adhes...
jessriedel 7y ago
> RFID are not good enough for this application. In the end you'd still need to take the items out of the bag to scan them, as RFID blocking tech is real, Like, obviously customers are blocking RFIDs en masse then the tech is a non-starter. I've never heard anyone say this was a serious threat; do you have a reference? If you're just going based on some youtube video proof-of-concept: it's not at all clear that this hypothetical attacks are more realistic than hypothetical attacks I could dream up for Amazon's system. > You'd need to chip every item in the store, which is a LOT of human labor (expensive), I am not suggesting RFIDs as an alternative for Amazon's business contracting with storeowners. I am taking a society-wide view and wondering why suppliers didn't switch from barcodes to RFIDs.

avianlyric 7y ago

Biggest problem with RFID is getting suppliers to add the tags to their products. After all you’re asking them to make a big change to their manufacturing processes. Some companies have managed this, Decathlon is a good example, but normally manage it by owning almost their entire supply chain. Which means they benefit from extreme integration. Basically anything that means universally modify packaging is usually a no-go for most retailers, it’s amazing we’ve even managed to standardise on barcodes.