Sunday, March 4, 2012

Whole Foods experimenting with Kinect-powered shopping carts

I found this article on one of the technology blogs that I frequently view in order to keep up with the constantly revolving cycle of gadgets that are being developed.  It's always fascinating to see what people will develop.  In this case, Whole Foods, yes that earthy-crunchy food market, has developed a shopping cart that is capable of following the customer around the store, checking items off their list, and even directly billing their account when they're done shopping.  This particular article is thin on details, but the video showing the cart in action is pretty intriguing.


As shown in the video the cart is even capable of advising the customer about the contents of certain products in regards to allergies.  In the demonstration the customer has entered into his list that he is looking for gluten free spagetti.  When the item is scanned by the cart it reacts to the purchase by notifying the customer that this particular brand of spagetti contains gluten.  It then tells the customer where in the store he/she can locate the gluten free version.  A more detailed article about the cart can be found through Popular Science.  The main driver behind this innovation is the Kinect, which was developed by Microsoft as an add-on to their popular gaming console the XBox 360.

Microsoft developed the Kinect in response to Nintendo's Wii gaming console that allowed uses to control their gaming experience by waving their arms while holding a controller.  However, Microsoft took this concept to the next level with the Kinect, which is capable of monitoring the full motion of the user's body.  Since it burst onto the scene in November 2010 the Kinect has spawned many new innovations such as the shopping cart shown above. Engineers have strapped the device to everything from vacuum cleaners to lounge chairs in an effort to provide them with the ability to sense and react to their surroundings.  Popular Science Magazine featured an article about the Kinect in November 2011, which explored everything that people have used the popular device for since its inception one year earlier.  Included as part of the article was the chart pictured below, which illustrates everything that engineers have used the Kinect for.

(Click to enlarge)

In creating a next generation gaming device Microsoft inadvertently created a device that can also be easily hacked, and adapted to slew of other applications.  Could this be the first wave of robot devices that will make our lives easier?  Only time will tell.

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