New scanner recognizes foods at checkout; may bag bar codes

Japanese company, Toshiba, has developed a, so-called, food recognition technology. The new technology is a scanner which recognises the item of food, particularly fruits and vegetables, thus removing the need for barcodes.

Packages and labels can be crumpled so that the barcode can't be read at the check-out point. Furthermore fruit and vegetables in supermarkets don't usually have barcodes because they're put out while they're fresh,

Food scanner

Shoppers all over the world have experienced the situation that the cashier has to key in the code manually. Even worse the cashier may not recognize some items (exotic fruits, rare vegetables, varieties), which can cause further delays. It's not a big issue, but it can be quite frustrating, particularly with a long line of shoppers waiting for their turn to check out.

Toshiba has developed this new scanner to solve that problem. The Object Recognition Scanner (ORS) works by utilizing pattern and colour recognition technology being developed by the company. To read the whole story, click here.