Article

Top 100: 62. RFID in retail

April 4, 2011

If the developers of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags have their way, grocery store checkout lines will soon be a thing of the past. RFID technology uses ink laced with carbon nanotubes to print electronics directly onto items such as cereal boxes and potato chip bags, and then instantly transmits information about an entire cart full of groceries. In the future as envisioned by James M. Tour of Rice University, whose research group invented the ink, shoppers will simply stroll past a detector that instantly calculates the contents of their carts. “No more lines,” he said. “You just walk out with your stuff.”

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