Like ideology, it works in theory... (Score 1)

I don't see it becoming a wide spread use item in most of the US. In affluent, tech savvy populations...significantly more possible than in rural, less affluent areas. For the stores, this is primarily a cost-cutting measure, allowing them to reduce the number of workers on the floor, while shuffling the workload to the consumer without providing the consumer much benefit aside from the mimetic "time saving" of checkout.

For consumers, like the commenter above (and myself at times), who bring their own bags, and have a very zen packing method that means the tomatoes don't end up under the five pound bag of rice, this sort of thing would be a time saver for small trips, but I don't see it providing much benefit on those "stock up the pantry, feeding a house of teenager" shopping trips where you're lucky to get out with one cart.

In addition, I have never been in a store with self-checkout lanes that didn't have at least one very frustrated consumer trying to get the machine to work. I've seen those lines stand empty, while checkout lines with have 10+ carts lined up.

I've used these little cart checkout things in Europe, and they work fine. But the average American consumer is not the average big city European, any more than a farmer in Southern Italy is like a Manhattanite. To expect that technocracy and lack of personal service is going to make inroads in places like the Deep South or the Midwest is to fail to understand the demographic or the culture from which the demographic arises.