The greatest urban myth of the last 5 years is that self-service checkouts in supermarkets will save you any time. A survey conducted by a national UK newspaper (okay it was the Daily Mail, but please don’t judge) recently proved what everybody already knew; anyone attempting to make grocery shopping a more stress free experience  by using the self-service checkouts is on a hiding to nothing.

In their wildly unscientific, but nonetheless engaging experiment, ASDA came off worst in the human Vs robot checkout trial - Human 4m 12s: Robot 20m 09s.

(For the pedants amongst you, human Vs robot check-out times for the other major stores were as follows: (H /R) Tesco 4.28/3.00, Sainsburys 8.04/10.01, Morrisons 8.08/4m)

In Japan, where they have a well documented predilection for all things robotic, technologists have come up with a way to guide confused shoppers through the self-service process with the help of an interactive robot perched on the side of the till. This cheery (and annoyingly squeaky) chap helps novice operators through the process without a hitch. At least that’s the plan.  Here’s a video of the future of check-outs from the Japan Trends blog. 

NEC Papero Robot Cashier from CScout on Vimeo.