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Uniqlo's Automated Self-Checkout
- politelemon 3y agoWhat happens to the tags, does it become ewaste, or removed after buying at store?
- Gigachad 3y agoThey aren’t electronic waste. They seem to contain just cardboard and a very slim strip of metal. So I guess they are waste in the same way your used razor blade is waste.
- Maxion 3y agoOnly issue is that I am not sure they are recycleable anymore. But it is a small strip of cardboard and metal - so probably doesn't move the needle anyway.
- Ajay-p 3y agoCould be a slippery slope. It is just a plastic cup, a straw, a thin piece of metal. Overtime those can build up especially if the volume rises. Should RFID purchasing in this manner really take off, it could be like plastic all over again. Which would create another environmental concern: Mining the metal for the tags.
- TheIronYuppie 3y agoit's crazy how good this is - if all self-checkout was like this, it'd be so much better (not sure how possible that is)
- CaptainHardcore 3y agoSeems like the same system Decathlon has been using since 2019.
- zacwest 3y agohttps://archive.is/ms1ke https://archive.is/ms1ke
- DanielVZ 3y agoWent to Europe a few months ago and experienced this checkout method in Uniqlo and Zara. It was mind blowing at first and I was trying to figure out wtf was going on. Was it AI?, maybe some complex algorithm based on item weight and other variables? Turns out they were “simply” RFID chips. It’s amazing how magical technology can be. I hope the tech spreads because I hate the checkout experience.
- nytesky 3y agoSo there are disposable RFID chips on every price tag? I would think that is wasteful and expensive? Is there a way to recapture them like a deposit return
- underseacables 3y agoThat's a lot of copper over time..
- hiddencost 3y agoPaying someone to spend their life checking people out: much more expensive and wasteful.
- jpcfl 3y agoYeah, and Uniqlo will hopefully find a way to recycle these tags once there's a business case for it. You can't recycle man-hours.
- krasin 3y ago> That's a lot of copper over time.. FWIW, RFID tags often use aluminum. According to a relevant study ([1]), "Environmental Burden Case Study of RFID Technology in Logistics Centre", the mean weight of the metal with foil is 0.161 g per tag (see Table 2). Let's suppose that every person on Earth (~8B) buys 1000 RFID-encoded goods per year: 0.161 * 8B * 1000 = 1.3e12 g = 1.3e9 kg = 1.3 M tonnes. In 2022, some 20M tonnes of copper has been mined ([2]), which gives us ~5% of the total copper produced. If aluminum is used, then ~2%. Takeaways: - yes, it could be a lot of metal, if the RFID technology gets widespread (narrator voice: it will) - it will visibly increase demand for aluminum / copper, but it won't be the end of the world. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9921012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9921012/ 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/mining/comments/18o9ydj/all_the_metals_we_mined_in_2022/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mining/comments/18o9ydj/all_the_met...
- habosa 3y agoThis system is so good I have no idea why it’s not everywhere. It’s magic.
- coltonweaver 3y agoLike others in the thread, I also experienced this recently in NYC. It’s amazing how incredibly quick the system is too. You place the items in the bin at the same time, and by the time you look up at the screen the price is already waiting for you to confirm and proceed to payment. One of the first times I’ve felt delight shopping in person in years.
- DeathArrow 3y agoSomeone called me for an interview with Amazon. They were working on an image recognition system for physical stores. Once you got an item from the shelve and put it on the basket they've open a virtual basket and add the item there, too. Once you get to checkout, all you have to do is pay. I had a similar idea when I developed checkout for Metro Cash and Carry. Put some cameras near the wait line at the cash registers and use image recognition instead of having a clerck scan all the goods. They weren't interested, though.
- yellow_lead 3y agoThis is called amazon go. I believe they had intentions of selling this tech to other stores but it never really took off (maybe uniqulo is using it?). They closed several of Amazon's stores which used this in 2023 and there are only around 40. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Go https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Go
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoBasic Amazon stores never used this. Only the amazon go convenience stores ever did. As far as I can tell, the former are all closed now while many of the latter are still open. At least here in Seattle.
- Gh0stRAT 3y agoAmazon Fresh also used it in a handful of locations. (and still does) IIRC there are 2 Whole Foods locations that use it as well.
- wenc 3y agoAmazon Fresh grocery stores have the cashierless thing too, not just Go. Amazon Fresh is all over the Seattle area and in many parts of the country (a number of them are in Chicago)
- deeebug 3y ago> I believe they had intentions of selling this tech to other stores but it never really took off (maybe uniqulo is using it?) They did, it's called "Just Walk Out" - https://www.justwalkout.com/ https://www.justwalkout.com/ and https://aws.amazon.com/just-walk-out/ https://aws.amazon.com/just-walk-out/ . I've seen it a bunch at airports, and occasional random city locations.
- michael_michael 3y agoMy local library system has had this for years. I’ve always wondered why it’s not more ubiquitous. You put your stack of books on the counter, and the titles appear on a confirmation screen almost instantaneously. Scan your library card and away you go.
- Sayrus 3y agoAnd a cool thing about this is that the tags are reused, probably for as long as the book is available.
- moneywoes 3y agoall from RFIDs?
- wiml 3y agoA library book is a relatively expensive object (not necessarily the physical book, but the whole cost of having the book at the library). Spending a couple dollars on a durable tag that is permanently attached to the book makes sense. Retail stores had to wait until people developed much cheaper tags, because each tag only gets used once. These cost a few cents per tag, and are different from the 13.56MHz tags that the library probably uses.
- hiddencost 3y agoI can buy rfid tags for 10c in bulk on Amazon.
- wiml 3y agoHm, you're right, even the 13.56 tags have come way down in price. Anyway, I think my point still stands: RFID as a technology used to be more expensive, and used to be at a price point were tracking an asset like a book or a shipping crate through multiple uses made sense but tracking a bottle of milk through a single purchase didn't.
- domh 3y agoMy library (in the UK) has this too, but you still have to do one book at a time.
- noveltyaccount 3y agoThis doesn't work with groceries because the tags can't be read through liquids, right? Any solutions? It would be delightful to just push my cart through a scanner and then pay.
- Gigachad 3y agoI had always assumed it was because the tags cost too much for low value items. And that it would be difficult to standardise with all the suppliers.
- Maxion 3y agoI'd say another challenge with grociers is that each item is of such differnt size, shape, material. You have tiny flexible plastic bags, bananas, basil plants, round glass beer bottles, self serve orange juice machines operated by third party companies, the meat and deli counter and so forth.
- Animats 3y agoYes. The last time this idea came around, RFID tags that could be read in bulk without interference cost about a dollar. Now they're US$0.04, says the article. Each RFID tag needs to be queried separately. If two of them send at the same time, neither gets received. So there's a recent and clever polling scheme which sends polls to which only certain tags reply, and tags also reply in multiple time slots chosen semi-randomly. It's a cross between two old ideas - slotted ALOHA, and the scheme used to make plug-and-play work for ISA cards. This is what allows just dumping all the stuff into a box and scanning all the tags at once. Uniqlo sells mostly Uniqlo stuff, so they have control over tagging. Also, clothing tends to be RF-transparent. If you're selling canned goods, this might not work. [1] https://www.hindawi.com/journals/wcmc/2021/9967739/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/wcmc/2021/9967739/
- rgmerk 3y agoHmmm. How many items did a Uniqlo clerk scan per hour previously? I’ve no doubt that the costs work out, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered…but over hundreds of items per hour the costs of the tags are nontrivial.
- Zacharias030 3y agoIt‘s true that one forgets the well-honed hate of self-checkout lines in Uniqlo and Decathlon these days. I find it amusing how a WSJ reporter could be so amazed by the tech. This has been the standard for years in cheap stores like Decathlon, it really doesn’t feel anything like magical.
- zynker 3y ago[dead]
- pjerem 3y agoI know in France this system have been used by Decathlon (which is a really appreciated chain store of sports equipment) for multiple years. I’m not sure if they developed it themselves (I know they do have some tech team but I don’t know if they have the capacity to develop hardware) or if it’s an off the shelf solution. It’s also possible that the needed hardware parts were already available and that they developed the software and the chassis. And yes this tech is like magic, you just throw all your stuff in the bin and boom, you pay. I also suspect that it only works for baskets that are not too dense (so clothes and sport equipment are ok) because otherwise we would have this in every grocery store since the gain in time is tremendous even compared to self-scan cashiers. It’s basically longer to scan your loyalty card and to contactless pay than to scan your 25 articles. Or maybe it’s just the cost of RFID tags that prevents this to happen because at the end of the day, queues at cashier are rarely a money bottleneck.
- Tomte 3y ago> I know in France this system have been used by Decathlon Also in Germany. It confused me the first time I saw it because it looks so different, but it worked well.
- interestica 3y agoAlso in Canada. The process feels a bit strange - especially when the receipt is just sent electronically as well.
- ozyschmozy 3y agoIn Netherlands as well. It actually picked up 3 of my items when I approached before I put anything in the basket. I was pretty confused at first
- jddj 3y agoThis happened to me too. It threw me because they told me which machine to go to (#11 for example) and when I arrived my items were already listed. For a moment I thought they had futuristic CV covering the whole store.
- atarian 3y agoI’ve used this several times and every time it accidentally scanned items from the person next to me so it didn’t really impress me as much.
- donbox 3y agoSeems Toronto Public Library uses a similar system to checkout books.
- 4ndrewl 3y agoHardly revolutionary - they were using this technology in Decathlon before COVID istr
- Symbiote 3y agoConsider reading the article. "Fast Retailing began testing RFID tags in 2013, introduced the self-checkout machines in 2014 and switched to the current model in 2019. They came to America on a trial basis in 2021, followed by an official rollout in 2022. This was the year they arrived in every Uniqlo store in the U.S."
- 4ndrewl 3y agoquite - the hyperbole of the subtitle (or it's presence on HN) doesn't match the banality reality of 'checkouts used by millions of people around the world still in use'
- steve_mcdougall 3y ago[dead]
- odiroot 3y agoAlthough I like to shop at Uniqlo, I have to say, this is not unique to them. In fact, I saw it first at Decathlon here in UK, before Uniqlo introduced theirs.
- xg15 3y agoTL;DR: The eliminated labour they are talking about is the physical act scanning the bar code of each piece individually - instead, they are using RFID, so you can just stuff all the pieces you're buying into a bin and the machine will detect everything automatically. I used that kind of self-checkout before and honestly find it less revolutionary than they make out to be here. It's still a hassle and there are lots of tasks which are still "transferred" to the shopper, e.g. folding up all the clothes correctly and making sure that everything is in order.
- mFixman 3y agoThe evolution of this is fully automated checkout like in Amazon Fresh stores. It's fantastic: I can go to the store, shove some groceries in my pockets or backpack, and walk out in 45 seconds. Amazon pings you a notification telling you how long you were there after you leave, and I'm convinced they do it to have people try to improve their shortest times.
- zeristor 3y agoI’ve tried the Amazon Fresh stores. It seems to be a fair amount of pfaff getting in to confirm who you are, there didn’t seem to be that much selection to find much worth buying. But automated tills have long queues, and I’ve noticed I sometimes bodge the payment system and leave without paying. But being in the habit of checking my bank account whilst shopping I notice payment hasn’t gone through and put my shopping through. Which is strange since someone ran after me when I absent Monday walked out of a store with an empty shopping basket.
- wenc 3y ago> It seems to be a fair amount of pfaff getting in to confirm who you are This seems overstated. You scan a barcode on your Amazon app. That's it. > there didn’t seem to be that much selection to find much worth buying. It feels like a smaller, more focused grocery store (something between an Aldi and a Safeway), but all the basics are there and then some. I don't live close enough to one to use it regularly, but I would if I did.
- KptMarchewa 3y agoI've used it when I was in US. It picked up an item I've looked at and returned to the shelf, had to dispute it.
- wenc 3y agoThis has not happened to me ever. I've picked up and put back items a ton. In fact the selling point of the tech is it is meant to handle this specific scenario. There are also weight sensors, so it's not just vision.
- inquirerGeneral 3y ago[dead]
- tslocum 3y agoEven more waste with the added bonus of making tracking you easier. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
- penjelly 3y agoi shop here often now, self checkout is one of the main reasons, so easy to use and quick too.