New Mobile Tech To Identify Origin Of Fruit

Serkan Toto

Dr. Serkan Toto is an independent consultant and advisor focusing on Japan’s web, mobile and social gaming industries. Based in Tokyo, he works together with financial institutions and startups worldwide. Serkan has been the Japan contributor for TechCrunch.com since 2008. He is sept-lingual, holds an MBA and is a PhD in economics. → Learn More

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

Did you ever ask yourself where the fruit you are about to buy in the supermarket comes from? If yes a new “fruit identification system”, developed by NEC, might be the right solution for you. The technology allows you to identify the origin of a given fruit by taking a picture of it with your phone’s camera.

NEC is known for its fingerprint and face recognition technologies and now says it has combined their expertise in these areas to come up with the new system.

The photos taken by users are compared with digital photos stored in an NEC data base. The company claims that during tests with “1,800 Andes melons”, the error rate stood at just 1 in 1 million.

NEC says the tech will one day enable end consumers and distributors to check the origin date and shipment date of fruit just by taking pictures (instead of relying on bar codes and other methods). The company expects the system to be commercially available in 2-3 years.

Via Mycom Journal [JP]