It’s not unfamiliar that businesses have been monitoring consumption habits to predict customers’ behavior, online stores give recommendations to users based on browse record, and supermarkets place commodities according to purchasing habits. Monitoring is not slowing down with technological developments. Recently, Walmart is trying to patent a shopping cart with “biometric feedback cart handle”, which is embedded with plenty of sensors that could perceive user’s feeling.
This novel shopping cart is able to collect various of data, including the biometric ones like stress level, body temperature, heart rate, or the other information like the speed of the shopping cart, the strength put on the handle, the duration of the handle being gripped. The grocery store giant states that this innovation will help its staff to promptly notify the elder customers in the store who need help. When the system detects that a user’s data like heart rate or temperature appears to be abnormal, it will inform the location of the user to the staff who will then give necessary assistance.
Although the plan is still at the stage of patent application, and the given reason is to allow staff to provide necessary assistance on time, it is hardly an acceptable service that could collect so much sensitive information. In addition, it’s not guaranteed that Walmart would use these data for other purposes. In case Walmart publishes this shopping cart, it could effortlessly collect a large amount of data from its numerous stores in a short time. The commercial value of these data is unpredictable. For instance, changes on biometric data when a customer passes by certain commodity could be an indication of interest, Walmart could employes the data for experiments, and the conclusion of which could be applied in the optimization of product placement and sales. Are people willing to see that their sensitive information is being used in this way? There is a big question mark.
Source:
https://www.cnet.com/news/walmart-shopping-cart-patent-measures-your-speed-and-heart-rate/
