Australian retail giant Woolworths is piloting self-scanning shopping carts, developed in collaboration with Hanshow. The technology allows shoppers who are member of the retailer’s loyalty scheme to scan their items at the trolley using a touchscreen device. Customers still need to pay at the regular checkout. If the trial is successful, the retailer plans to roll out the smart trolleys to all Australian stores. Woolworths is the first retailer to trial smart carts on the Australian market.
The trolley, which is currently available for customers to trial at Woolworths Windsor in Sydney’s North-West, is an evolution of Scan&Go technology that eliminates the need for customers to use their own mobile device to scan. The software for the smart carts was developed in-house by Woolworths. Using the retailer’s promotional card, shoppers unlock a tablet-style device from the charging wall at the front of the store and attach it to their trolley. The tablet or a handheld scanning device on the shopping cart is used to scan the barcode or QR code on the label to add the item to the shopping list.
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All photos: Hanshow
Technology provider Hanshow supplied the Australian retailer with the design of the trolley, the clip-on tablets and the charging stations. The Woolworths smart trolleys do not have a weighing unit for control purposes. Hanshow integrated two visual sensor cameras into the detachable tablet device, which are used to monitor and scan the items selected by customers in real time. The cameras can identify the products placed in the shopping cart by capturing and analysing image data to ensure that the barcodes or QR codes of these items are successfully scanned.
Additional features planned in the future
The scanning of loose fruit and vegetables currently relies on the customer’s self-service weighing process. Shoppers first need to weigh the selected products at the self-service weighing station in the store. The scales, equipped with software from Tiliter, automatically identify produce by using AI-based image recognition. Woolworths introduced the self-scanning technology back in 2020, as The Retail Optimiser reported. The Australian market leader has now equipped all its stores with Tiliter’s solution.
The smart cart will be rolled out to additional nine Sydney supermarkets in the coming weeks. “Pending feedback from our customers, we hope to introduce Scan&Go Trolley in more of our supermarkets nationwide, along with some additional features in the coming months, including the ability to pay for their groceries on the device,” says Faye IIhan, Managing Director idX, at Woolworths Group.
Personalised recommendations
Going forward, Hanshow plans to use Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI platform to develop a highly interactive intelligent AI assistant for the smart carts, which will provide product recommendations by synchronising shoppers’ online and offline shopping. Hanshow explained to The Retail Optimiser that the visual sensors inside the detachable tablet device provide a flexible space for future technology upgrades, such as the possible introduction of more advanced image recognition technology.
The video in English language shows Hanshow’s Smart Carts in operation at Woolworths. (Video: Wooloworths)
