Tangential: Can someone more in the know answer this for me? What happened to RFID for things like this? I know it is used elsewhere but it seems like that would be a much faster and lighter weight solution for self-checkout.
RFID still costs several cents per sensor. At suparmarkets, this is a non-starter, but for some retailers, like Uniqlo, it's acceptable.
You would think that overpriced concessions would be a great place for this because it can be very fast and accurate but I think this would require the food handler to make sure to use a different tray or container for each differently priced item, etc. And there may just be enough items that would be hard to affix an RFID to (metal can, etc) that would make it unfeasible.
I kinda figured it would come down to RFID still probably being pricey, used it a while back when it was newish and pricey but haven't looked in years.
That is a good point with the pricing making it cost effective but they probably look at it from some maximum profit POV.
Honestly something like an Automat diner style system would help with the latency and queuing and way easier to implement technically.
