Apart from RFID, how many cameras would be "reading" everything and from how many angles? Will bluetooth be always on to track movement and where we paused and for how many seconds?
Just from these two technologies the "machine" can see that I picked one bag of crisps, one soda (oops wrong flavour I put it back and got the other flavour)(machine saw this and made the change).
RFID would only validate at the exit.
As for the cost 7-15 cents per RFID tag:
-cash management costs. A lot. If you only do e-payments then you save from that
-10 cashiers cost a lot (mistakes, skimming also costs)
Just from these two cost-cuts a super market can cover the cost to RFID everything in the store.
Also the fact that a retailer (I am thinking Carrefour of Sainsbury's that move millions of items per day can get far better prices on tags).
Maybe the RFID chips in question are just too low end ?
I have read an article about race timing chips runners have in their badges during a marathon and they can apparently handle large number of runners, about 50 per second:
