72 years after [Clarence Saunders] attempted to patent his idea, advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies are making the dream of a worker-free store a reality. And American cashiers may soon be checking out.
A recent analysis by Cornerstone Capital Group suggests that 7.5m retail jobs – the most common type of job in the country – are at "high risk of computerization", with the 3.5m cashiers likely to be particularly hard hit.
Another report, by McKinsey, suggests that a new generation of high-tech grocery stores that automatically charge customers for the goods they take – no check-out required – and use robots for inventory and stocking could reduce the number of labor hours needed by nearly two-thirds. It all translates into millions of Americans' jobs under threat.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday August 18 2017, @02:22PM
The improvement in product package image quality related to barcodes eventually paid for itself because a packaged good can carry more information, reducing the need for store staff to answer questions. Fresh produce, on the other hand, often doesn't carry a barcode and thus still needs to be weighed at the checkout.
In addition, barcodes are passed over the scanner one at a time. The promise of "just walk out" checkout with RFID implies that some device will read, bill, and deactivate all tags in an entire shopping cart at once.
I'd be interested to see a proof of concept in more than one city of this being made to work.