Since Amazon launched the concept of Amazon Go, an unmanned convenience store in 2018, there has been a wave of smart shelves in the world.People can buy products by themselves by picking products from the smart shelves in convenience store and leave without making a payment manually, because the customer will be charged directly after walking out of the exit, and the price and qty already be recognized when they are selecting the products.In fact, as the most important part of the realization of unmanned supermarkets, the concept of smart shelves appeared on the market as early as 2003, initially as a tool for detecting inventory shortages. However, combining its IOT sensor system with the latest technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning has demonstrated higher commercial value, especially in the retail industry.
Let’s see how unmanned retail store can help retails:
- Provide users with real-time inventory information and remind out-of-stock replenishment
- Effectively prevent theft
- Improve user experience, consumers do not need to queue
- Understand consumer preferences through big data and plan shelf layout reasonably
- Address labor shortages
Unmanned retail store combine various technologies such as artificial intelligence(AI), cameras, IOT sensor technology, etc., to conduct accurate settlement and behavior analysis of customer shopping. AMOWELL sensor has been deeply involved in the field of load cell for many years,and we will introduce how to choose a suitable load cell for unmanned stores and precautions. Amowell AM21A AM36A AP61A AF91A, etc. can be used in smart shelves, which need to be selected according to the specific weighing product and installation structure.
Factors that affect the selection of load cells in smart shelves include maximum weighing value, accuracy requirements, operating temperature, usage scenarios, and product type to be weighed.
Q1:Why you need to know the maximum weighing value?
A1: It will help you to choose suitable load cell capacity. For example, if there is a 10kg load cell, it can handle max load of 10kg, and safe overload for load cell generally 120%，so if shelf max load over 12kg, load cell will be broken.
Q2:Why you need to know the accuracy request?
A2: Accuracy is one of the important parameters of the load cell. Knowing the customer’s requirements for accuracy, you can choose the appropriate load cell to achieve the purpose of accurate weighing.For example, if you want to weigh Coke and know how many bottles are taken, each bottle generally is 500g, even if the load cellr has an error of 50g, you can still accurately get the quantity. But if you’re weighing a piece of chewing gum, the load cell obviously needs to be more accurate.
Q3:Why do you need to know the operating temperature?
A3: In general, the standard operating environment of the load cell is 0~40℃, which is no problem for the conventional room temperature environment. However, if it needs to be used in extremely high and extremely low environments such as refrigerators or ovens, it is necessary to inform the manufacturer of the specific operating temperature range, choose more suitable materials and production processes to meet the needs of accurate weighing, such as using a higher temperature strain gauge , or additional temperature compensation to the load cell, etc.
Q4:Why you need to know the usage scenarios?
A4: Traditionally, load cells are most widely used in various scales, starting, clearing, and weighing. But for smart shelves in unmanned retail store, the load cells will be placed under the shelves for a long term, and it cannot be reset ore zero as there is always products on the shelves. This has led to the requirements for the creep performance of the load cell in the usage scenario of the smart shelves, means under the same load,reduce the influence of the creep drift on the accuracy.
At present, Amowell have rich experience on these project as many customers already succeed in using our load cell in their smart shelves,these load cells type are mainly micro load cell series and parallel beam load cell(or single point load cell) series products. The micro load cells are characterized by small size, such as the AM21A ultra-thin sensor, with 10kg, 30kg, and 50kg measuring ranges, suitable for smart shelves which have limit space for installation. The disadvantage of the micro load cell is that compared with the parallel beam load cell, the accuracy is lower. Due to structural reasons, zero point compensation cannot be done, so it is not suitable for long-term weighing of small gram items.
The design of the single point load cell structure makes it lower drift in creep which is suitable for long term load products, and also can weigh the products who need high accuracy for small grams items. The model that customers choose the most is AP61A. The capacity of this load cell is 10kg,30kg, 50kg and 100kg. Due to the design principle, the load cell with parallel beam structure can do zero compensation to reduce the error value of long-term weighing. at the same time, the parallel beam load cell are able to do temperature compensation which makes it possible to use in different temperature environments and equipment, such as refrigerators etc.
But As the single point load cell size is a bit big, it is not suitable to install in limit space, at this time, Amowell AF91A load cell become a good choice with it’s low-profile thin design, capacity range from 30kg to 150kg, Accuracy of 0.05%~0.03%,and also are able to do temp-compensate, zero compensation etc,suitable for long-term load too,but with smaller size.
You can contact us to get installation picture, product detailed specifications , drawings etc, communicate with our professional engineer with one to one service, provide suitable weighing solution for different projects. ( info@amowellsensor.com )
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