Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

[Malacite]

Kinect Grocery Cart - YouTube!


Microsoft demonstrates Kinect-enabled shopping cart | Joystiq

If you've dreamed of a day when your shopping cart could slowly stalk you, as you peruse the aisles at your local Whole Foods, Microsoft is one step ahead of you. The company recently demonstrated a prototype of a Kinect-enabled shopping cart. Employing a monitor, a motor and a Kinect sensor, the cart can recognize a membership card, pull up a customer's shopping list and scan objects as they are placed in the cart. What's more, the cart will dutifully follow a customer around the store.

As demonstrated in the video above, the cart can even identify user preferences -- in this case, warning Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg that he picked up the wrong type of spaghetti (apparently he's going gluten free). Best of all, the cart allows customers to immediately pay for their purchases using a stored account, thus negating the need to stand in the checkout line (unless you want help bagging your groceries ... but you brought your own bags, right?).

We're all for a future of hyper-intelligent (and hyper-expensive) shopping carts but, if said future doesn't include checkout lines, how will we keep up with the life and times of Angelina Jolie?

[Jarre]

Re: Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

Does it start taunting you if you put to much chocolate or cakes in?

[Taskmage]

Re: Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

Stuff they're already doing is WAY creepier than a robotic shopping cart.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/ma...ng-habits.html

Colbert did a great bit on this article the other night but his website is currently giving me the finger.

---------- Post added at 03:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:34 PM ----------

If this article is tl;dr, this should be the link to the Colbert Report clip I'm thinking of: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col...-a-buyer-power
I can't load it to be sure, atm. =/

[Malacite]

Re: Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

Oh the Target bit about pregnant women?

Yeah I saw that.

[Jarre]

Re: Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

Tesco's in teh Uk know to much about us as everytime we collect Clubcard points (you get money off vouchers and the points add up to financial lump sum amounts you can get off your shopping roughly a £1 per £100 spent as a minimum with some items getting double points, get points for using reusable bags etc. etc. But they have a record of everythign you buy, where you bought it from, how much you spend and they target you with vouchers and incentives to buy other stuff there not selling to well.

[Armando]

Re: Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

Stuff they're already doing is WAY creepier than a robotic shopping cart.

Thanks, that was an interesting read. Rather than creepy, I think it's pretty cool. Companies are going to barrage me with ads, flyers and coupons for the rest of my life. Might as well send me shit I'm actually interested in. I guess the real issue is making sure they're not selling the info they dug up on me to third parties.

[Takelli]

Re: Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

Thanks, that was an interesting read. Rather than creepy, I think it's pretty cool. Companies are going to barrage me with ads, flyers and coupons for the rest of my life. Might as well send me shit I'm actually interested in. I guess the real issue is making sure they're not selling the info they dug up on me to third parties.

Oh, they will be Armondo, and you may never know it.

Hell, before I even started shopping, I would get adds all the time, and even credit cards (I wasn't even 14 when I got my first credit card, and I'm not responcible for anything on it, nor are my parents. -Evil laughs.-).

[Jarre]

Re: Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

One example of this is mobile phones (cell phones for the yanks ). The suposedly ex directory phones in the UK you get alot of cold calls because all the networks sold our phone numbers to teh highest bidder and then spouted some bullshit about an opt out that was so tiny and burried in the terms and conditions that even offcom struggled to find it. Its in teh courts but its jsut going around and around in circles and because the government run offcom, cost cutting has meant its ont eh abck burner because they can;t afford all the legal fees.

[Armando]

Re: Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

Oh, I figure trivial details like phone numbers and addresses get passed around enough. They're probably not that hard to track down these days either with social network and Google and all that. I mean more the kind of personal data they can only infer from statistical analysis - like predicting a woman is pregnant or not. If they can figure that out, they can probably infer a whole bunch of other things based on what you regularly purchase if they choose to.

[Takelli]

Re: Kinect Shopping Cart - The First Step towards Skynet.

Tesco's in teh Uk know to much about us as everytime we collect Clubcard points (you get money off vouchers and the points add up to financial lump sum amounts you can get off your shopping roughly a £1 per £100 spent as a minimum with some items getting double points, get points for using reusable bags etc. etc. But they have a record of everythign you buy, where you bought it from, how much you spend and they target you with vouchers and incentives to buy other stuff there not selling to well.

I am unsure of what you mean by cold calls....

I never get any calls from people that I don't know. And if I do, I tell them to not to call me again nicely, and then say if you do, I will report you for harassment, as I work at nights, and need to sleep during the day. You are interrupting my daily life, and making it hard for me to work at night. Then, I just hang up. If they call back, I just bitch them out. Especially if its an hour after I've falling asleep.

My family used to keep a whistle by the phone cause people wouldn't stop calling us. They stopped after a few blows of that. haha

I do get texts, and adds on my phone though. But other than that, nothing really.