Machine vision is now so powerful it can detect slight changes in skin movement (See video on the graphics behind The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ted.com for ideas) under many light conditions. In the case of warehouse and supermarket inventory/POS management systems it would seem that the next step forward is to remove RFID and barcodes altogether and replace the readers with machine vision. Training machines to read objects, to recognise certain logos, colours and shapes is relatively simple technology. As long as the features are distinctive and all objects are placed within view of the camera they can be 'read'. There would be no need to scan anything physically just simply put the items along a conveyor and let the machine do the scanning.
Clearly there are already sunk costs in infrastructure at warehouses and supermarkets but over time the current systems will need to be upgraded in any case. Marks and Spencer, Ikea and others are already experimenting with self serve cashiers. Machine vision could be the next generation.
1 comment:
Respectfully, I must disagree. Barcodes, and especially the 2D datamatrix codes, can be "read" by a camera under a wide range of conditions. Unfortunately, while packaging may appear highly consistent to our human eye, subtle changes in lighting can make automatic recognition highly unreliable.
To learn more about machine vision, check out http://machinevision4users.blogspot.com/
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