Technology can help us do so many things from navigating unknown streets to keeping music and data files in a cloud. Technology can even help you shop at your local Whole Foods market. That’s right, Whole Foods has developed an experimental type of shopping that uses a Kinect device to help shoppers find the food they want. In a recent video published on the Engadget site, a Whole Foods rep showed the world how this new Kinect shopping cart works.

Essentially, the new shopping carts are equipped with a Kinect device and this device helps shoppers find foods, create shopping lists, and it can even add up how much your weekly organic goods are going to cost you. In addition, if you were to connect a card with your Whole Foods account, you can even pay for your items just by scanning them inside of a Kinect cart.

What’s Kinect All About?

Microsoft’s Kinect is a motion-sensing device that was originally developed for the Xbox 360 console. Basically, this device includes webcams that sense a person’s every movement. In the case of the Whole Foods Kinect cart, the device detects the products that a shopper places inside of a cart. So, for example, if you were to scan a bag of coffee underneath a Whole Foods Kinect device, the price of that coffee would appear on a small screen. If you had placed the item on a pre-loaded shopping list, the Kinect device would then cross that item off of your list. If you had listed a specific type of coffee on your list, and you picked up the wrong kind, the Kinect cart would then tell you about your error.

Not only do the Whole Foods Kinect carts help you find the right items, tally up prices, and provide you with a quick way to pay, these carts will follow shoppers too. As you move up and down the aisles, Kinect carts will follow your every move, so that you don’t have to worry about pushing that heavy cart along. Needless to say, the new Whole Foods Kinect carts will change the way that people shop for good.

Product Launch

If you’re wondering when Whole Foods will put these carts into a store near you, you might be waiting awhile. According to the Engadget article, no date has been set just yet (or, rather, the article doesn’t list any release date information). However, you can expect to see these carts sometime in the near future if all goes according to Whole Foods plan. Really, the idea of an intelligent cart seems like a great one, though I have to wonder if a number of robotic carts following people around a crowded Whole Foods store will be something of a nightmare (or a scene out of a nightmare, at least!).

If you shop at Whole Foods, would you use this type of cart? There’s no doubt that the modern shopping car can use a dose of technology, but is the Kinect device the way to go? If Whole Foods manages to entice shoppers with these new carts, it might only be a matter of time before Kinect carts become commonplace – now, wouldn’t that be interesting!