What is the difference between gravity sensing, RFID and vision technology?

        At present, the main technologies applied to the smart fridge vending machines or micro markets are gravity sensing, RFID tags, and dynamic vision identification.

       Gravity sensing is to install a gravity sensor at the bottom of each tray that holds the commodity. Once the commodity is taken away, the sensor can trigger and transmit relevant signals to the computer, and finally complete the settlement when the door is closed.

       RFID tag technology is to paste an RFID electronic tag on each commodity. Once the commodity is taken away from the container, the settlement will be started immediately.

       Dynamic vision recognition is to determine which products the shopper finally take away by recognizing the actions of the shopper to take and put back the goods, regardless of what is left in the container.

      RFID technology with electronic tags as the medium has fatal flaws. When the label is damaged or torn off by the user, the user can obtain the item for free. If it is a box of biscuits, users can open the box, take only the biscuits away and leave the RFID labeled box inside, so that they can enjoy it for free. It is understood that the cost of each RFID commodity’s barcode is USD0.08, which means that as long as RFID technology is adopted, the cost of each commodity in the unmanned convenience store will increase by USD0.08. At the same time, attaching electronic labels to each commodity will cost huge labor costs, hence the cost of an RFID base vending machine can easily reach at high side.

       The disadvantage of the dynamic vision identification technology is that when users are shopping on the machine, the calculation speed of the recognition system is significantly slower, and there is even the possibility of errors. Because it has high requirements on servers and data traffic, and is also highly dependent on bandwidth. This makes the equipment of this technology expensive, difficult to popularize. And the recognition process is lengthy, which also leads to impaired customer experience. At the same time, this technology has strict restrictions on the size, placement, height, lighting and other environmental conditions of commodities, and the categories of supported commodities are also limited.

      Gravity sensing technology uses sensors to sense the weight change on the shelf to detect the behavior of goods being taken away or put back. The only defect of gravity sensing is that equal replacement cannot be recognized. Compared with the first two technologies, the cost of gravity induction technology is lower, about one-third of the traditional spring machine, and its reliability is guaranteed

       Especially in the field of fresh food, the advantages of gravity sensing technology are more significant. When RFID is applied to fresh food, it is necessary to weigh first, calculate the price, and then label it; when vision technology is applied to fresh food, it is the mass identification of huge and irregularly shaped items. The pressure on the server and bandwidth is obvious; and when gravity sensing technology is used for fresh food, it only needs to calculate its weight, and then cooperate with the relevant algorithms in the background to simplify the whole process and improve the efficiency significantly.

    For gravity sensing technology, a problem that has to be paid attention to is its accuracy. The current accuracy can be controlled within 1/10,000 of the range. That is to say, the weight error of a 10kg apple can be controlled within about 1g and the recognition error for different commodities can be controlled between 5 and 10g.

    The accuracy of the MICRON smart fridge can reach 0.5g, and the error range of the goods can be set on the vending software. Our clients can choose to sell fresh food by kilograms or food and beverages by piece. There are frozen, refrigerated, regular temperature models to choose, which can be customized according to the different needs of our customers.

If you’re interested in setting up vending machine business, contact me now for a professional proposal!

Export manager: Ben Lee
Email:  ben@micronvending.com
Wechat/Whatsapp: +86 188-020-834-63