Here’s one for anyone that really wants to be “chipped” but is still waiting for the technology to mature.
Germany just opened a new supermarket called the “Future Store” showcasing some retail technology we may start to see filter into standard supermarkets around the world over the coming decade.
Some of it is a little Jetsons-esque (and cute) like the robot telling you about all the cool stuff, however the key enabling technology is the mobile phone.
Shoppers can install an app on their phone, allowing them to “scan” products as they put them in their trolley. When you are ready to checkout, you hit a button in the app which then creates a single barcode for the final value which you scan at a self-service terminal. You then pay in a standard manner and wander out of the shop.
Most brilliant about this mechanism is it doesn’t try to take any of the pieces out of the process - all the phone is doing is acting as a calculator and then passes the total to the till. This leverages approaches we already use for things like deli goods where a unique barcode is generated just for that purchase.
This keeps the whole system very simple but will save a huge amount of time when doing the shopping and won’t be scary for the shoppers. Once customers are happy with the behaviour you can start giving them more features to play with like actually paying for it off their mobile (or chip in their hand!) as they are putting their groceries in their basket.
The full story is at BBC tech news