Supermarket of the future: Talking Wine and computing Shopping Cart – Handelsblatt

Berlin At first, the customer needed a manual. “They felt like thieves when the goods from the shelf took,” says shopping expert Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein. You gave it to them in writing: easy to pack Sugar, jam, milk and slide to the checkout. That was 65 years ago, when on September 5, 1949 in Hamburg opened Germany’s first self-service supermarket. Revolving doors, shopping carts, an unprecedented selection -., And the creeping end of the mom-and-pop stores

Now the food trade looks back before a caesura. “With the digital technology is a change in quality of service and convenience,” says Becker-Sonnenschein, the executive director of the food economy, ahead. While experts not believe that the online shopping boom of books and fashion spills on vegetables and milk. But supermarkets need to change.

Industry 4.0

• The fourth industrial revolution

  Many see the networking of the factory as the fourth industrial revolution – after the mechanization hydropower and steam engines, of labor mass production on assembly lines and introduction of electronics and IT.

• Different terms

  For the networking of the production is often used the term industry 4.0 – Hannover Messe made the concept popular a few years ago. Experts speak of cyber physical systems, ie in which physical and virtual world merge. If objects are linked, is also from the Internet of Things, the speech – this applies not only for plants but also for cars or houses

• Industry buys more and more IT

  Because industrial production and IT are merging more and more, the industry is an important customer for the IT industry: She is wearing now about one fifth of the sales at how the industry association Bitkom tells. Since it is not surprising that the organization on the industrial fair is present

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  Funded by the federal government

  The policy is measured the theme great importance to the federal government considers industry 4.0 in its High-Tech Strategy as a “future project”. Good for business and science: This includes a funding of 200 million euros

• Many open questions

  The breakthrough industry-4.0 technology is however still pending. Not least because many questions remain unanswered. Which standards apply? Which communication networks are needed? As it is with the safety of the plants?

If it is true what Gerrit Kahl from imagines Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Saarbrücken, would be an instruction manual once again not a bad idea, it has developed an intelligent shopping cart with a filled online home shopping list and navigation system that knows the way to the goods. . A shopping cart, the customer follows like a dog

“We need more fun in the supermarket,” says the young computer – and thinks also of white wine, presenting with a French accent even when he made the Regal is taken: “I’m a Chardonnay.” But it’s not just gimmick. A lined with allergy information phone could warn the customer before muesli with nuts, the Shopping Cart add up the value of goods