Are barcodes going the way of the dodo?

For a while now, there has been a lot of work on improving, or even eliminating, the bar code system for foods.

While scanning of packaged food products in supermarkets is now the method used to process customer orders, it was only 15 or so years ago that there were no scanners. There are still some in our community that can remember when scanners first came into our lives and the furore about how they are going to cause cancer and other medical conditions.

The use of barcodes and scanners has given retailers an incredible ability to maintain stock control and has allowed for many of the technological benefits we now accept as part of our shopping experience.

The major problem with bar codes is that fresh produce does not have them and therefore cannot be scanned. This has meant that the weighing and manual price entry has remained with us.

A new type of scanner does not use barcodes but a small high speed camera and can be used on all foods, including fresh produce.

The scanner has been created in Japan by Toshiba Tec and is called the Object Recognition Scanner. It has the ability to ignore the background in the picture taken and allow the system to identify the actual food itself.

Toshiba said, “Ordinarily, with a camera, the surroundings would appear as well, but with the Object Recognition Scanner, only the subjects like apples appear. That means the noise is eliminated from the beginning, so the scanner can recognize objects very fast, even if they’re moving. Fruit and vegetables in supermarkets don’t usually have barcodes, because they’re put out while they’re fresh. So these items can’t be read at the register using barcodes, which means staff need to input data to record them. If staff are part-time employees, they may not recognise some items, which can cause delays. We’re developing this new scanner to solve that problem.”

The new scanners are not yet available as Toshiba is finalising it’s fine tuning.

Another method that is being used to replace the bar code is the Radio Frequency Identification chip. This is a tiny specially developed chip that is attached to the product and replaces the bar code. The chip is read by a special scanner and provides; price, quantity remaining, product name, weight of packaged food and manufacturer as well as other required information. This method is already heavily used with the warehousing and transport industries and is now starting to make it’s way into retail.