Microsoft has demonstrated an early prototype of a Kinect-powered shopping cart, which is being developed for Whole Foods by Texas-based company Chaotic Moon. The project is called the “Smarter Cart” and it uses a tablet and scanners to read the items you place inside, check whether they’re on your shopping list, cross them off and ring them up.
The motorized cart can follow you around the store and has voice recognition and speech so you can give it instructions and it can let you know if the item you added wasn’t on your list or is the wrong type of item. The “Smarter Cart” has a Windows 8 tablet and uses a UPC scanner and RFID to read the items. All you really need to do is upload a shopping list and place the items in the cart. It will cross them off your list and you won’t have to wait in a long line at the checkout because your items are rung up as you go.
The cart can also track the items placed in it by scanning their bar codes, match them to a pre-made shopping list, and give the total cost of all the items in the basket. It can even detect if the wrong type of item is grabbed and verbally inform the shopper. In a demonstration, a rep placed a box of spaghetti in the cart and was instantly told that it was not gluten-free, which has been specified on the shopping list. With some voice commands, the cart could then tell the rep in what aisle and section the gluten-free spaghetti was located. A shopper could also link the cart to a billing account to pay for everything instantly, and then bag up their groceries and walk right out of the store.