I’m a huge fan of the self-checkout line at grocery stores. They’re useful and pretty reliable, if you want to get in and out with a couple items. The one thing I’ve been burned on: produce. There’s no easy way to scan a banana. You have to look up different codes for lettuce. And apples. You could probably bake an entire apple pie in the time it would take you to correctly identify the variety in your cart and pay for them. Fear not, for a grocery store in Japan has introduced scanners that will take the guess work out of your shopping trip with a built-in camera.
The Verge reports: “Its focus on color and patterning means that it’s able to distinguish between extremely similar-looking produce varieties like Fuji and Jonagold apples.”
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