Wet weekend trivia question

[ChrisandPenney52]

A pretty smart bunch of people on this forum so someone must know the answer to this pointless but nagging question ...

We've shopped at some of the bigger French supermarkets recently, and used the self-service fruit and veggie pricing. Magically they seem to identify what's in the bag and put up the correct picture and price. How do they detect that you've put carrots not courgettes on the scales?

This was not a random occurrence. It happened lots of times in several shops.

 

[Californiaman]

I've not seen this so don't know the proper answer but.. I would imagine they can use a camera to identify the difference between most fruits easily enough - a friend uses this technique to automate the packing of Kiwi fruit with the cameras used to selectively classify the ffruit based on size, quality, bruising etc (well, they did until the NZ Kiwi industry was pretty much destroyed by bacteria)

 

[ChrisandPenney52]

Brings back memories of eating Golden Kiwis (sweeter than the green variety) bought at the side of the road direct from the producer on North Island a few years ago