Or just go Aldi's route and put enormous barcodes covering entire sides of the package. Scan rate goes up _immensely_ when you don't have to give even half a ho

Or just go Aldi's route and put enormous barcodes covering entire sides of the package. Scan rate goes up _immensely_ when you don't have to give even half a hoot about orientation. Before we tried to use AI and cameras for this task, bottle-return machines have just used barcode scanners. They're fast, deadly accurate, and take zero intelligence to program. The achilles' heel is certain jerkface brands that use white-ink-on-shiny-aluminum, which violates the contrast requirements of many scanners. For those, image recognition would be a valuable second method.