Sensors, robots to take on self-service check-out theft

SCANNING your white peaches as loose carrots? Your days might be numbered as a Melbourne tech start-up trials sensors and robots in a bid to stamp out self-service theft. See how they’ll catch shoppers out.

Self service checkouts at a Woolworths store in Sydney, Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017. (AAP Image/Joel Carrett) NO ARCHIVING

A MELBOURNE technology start-up is trialling the use of sensors and robots to stamp-out self-service check-out theft in supermarkets.

Unsuspecting customers at a supermarket in NSW are the first to come under the microscope of black.ai’s technology, which uses three-dimensional depth sensors to map the store — from floor space, trays of fresh produce, aisles of stock and trolleys — to determine what is purchased.

Co-founder Keaton Okkonen said customers’ movement can be tracked throughout their journey through the store.

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“If we know what they’re interacting with, we can use that to figure out what they actually picked up and what they looked at but didn’t pick-up, which is equally as valuable. We’re trying to prevent accidental stock bleed, and make it easier to do the right thing,” Mr Okkonen said, cautiously referring to theft that occurs at supermarkets’ self-service check-out registers when customers deliberately enter their white peaches as loose carrots.

black.ai founders Sebastien Collier, Karthik Rajgopal and Keaton Okkonen.

The most commonly stolen items are fresh fruit and vegetables, which accounts for about 24 per cent of all stolen goods, according to Canstar Blue.

The research firm recently revealed 7 per cent of shoppers admitted to stealing an item without scanning it, while 9 per cent admitted to not paying the full price by scanning an item as a cheaper alternative.

Mr Okkonen said the three-year-old company he started with Sebastien Collier and Karthik Rajgopal was approached by a supermarket to see if they could apply their technology to the shop floor.

Black.ai initially set out to develop a platform to help manage driverless cars. The company recently raised $1.2 million in a seed round, and count the entrepreneur behind Amazon’s “Alexa” voice recognition technology, William Tunstall-Pedoe, among their angel investors.

The trio’s technology has been trialled at a NSW supermarket, which he was unable to name, and is due to be rolled out at another five stores across the state in coming months. It is also being tested at a supermarket in Hong Kong.

Major Australian supermarkets are reluctant to divulge the cost they shoulder due to items stolen at self-service check-outs.

Woolworths “has a range of security measures” in place to try and catch people doing the wrong thing, while Coles uses electronic article surveillance technology to reduce pilfering. The supermarket chain also has trained covert security officers in stores “catching thieves every week and reporting them to police”, a spokesman said.

AusVeg chief executive James Whiteside said while fresh produce was the most commonly stolen item, it was an issue for the supermarkets to manage.

“It’s very difficult for us to understand what costs the supermarkets incur. They moved to the self-service check-outs because the labour savings must outweigh the costs of pilfering,” Mr Whiteside said.

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