Nokia camera phones for grocery shopping

Following yesterday's post in Textually, on how "RFID plus mobile phones is an idea whose time has come", well it is coming, to Finland, according to Food Production Daily.

Excerpts:

"It looks like Finland Consumers with special dietary needs could benefit from a barcode and mobile camera phone system that communicates product information, according to researchers in Finland. Potential uses of RFID technology are also being investigated.

The trial stage of TIVIK, a Finnish project applying interactive computing to convey product information to consumers, is set to start in October 2004 and will include 100 consumers in order to test the prototype system. The trial will run for three months and will involve participants that are either on a weight-loss diet or are lactose intolerant.

Consumers with special dietary needs are being targeted first because they have a bigger motivation to use the technology.

The participants will be given Nokia mobile camera phones to take with them when they go grocery shopping. They will be able to take a photo of the product's barcode with the mobile phone and information about the product will appear on the phone's screen. The system allows the shopper to set-up a unique profile on a home computer or will be able to choose from a variety of pre-programmed profiles set-up on the phone.

The system works using Finland's standard electronic article numbering (EAN13) barcodes on most packages. Product information, similar to that supplied by the manufacturer to the retailer, is stored on a main database.

The project's research director Caj Sodergard says the software used in the trial could work just as well with radio frequency identification (RFID) codes using the same product database. This view is supported by a recent research paper published by Wireless Healthcare, which identifies a number of customer services that could use RFID tags".

More articles on related barcode technologies (but not including RFID):

-- Barcodes for the World of Ends

-- Scanbuy works with Ericsson to equip new cell phones with bar code commerce solutions

-- Sem@code: real-world hyperlinks with a camera phone

-- Technology links ads to website via cell phone

-- New Commerce System Uses Barcode on Picture Phones

-- Comparison book shopping on Amazon.com thanks to Nokia camera phones and Neomedia Technologies

emily | 3:34 PM | Barcode Technologies / RFID Tags / NFC |
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