Product-free retail is interesting, but not as exciting as QR-code-free automated retail.
There’s still the point with QR codes where they don’t really work with produce, fragrances, or other things you want to touch and feel. And they’re slow for consumers. If you want to give all that up, you’d be better off shopping online and saving the trip to the store along with the patience and arm strain of photographing everything.
Both Toshiba and Fujitsu are working on automating the checkout process with smarter scanners.
Fujitsu has its ominous looking tunnel, with a conveyor belt that moves products almost 3 times faster than a traditional grocer checkout, all completely automated.
Meanwhile, Toshiba is using a more traditional scanner (as pictured above) with just enough smarts to read objects without worrying about scanning bar codes or inputting produce codes.