Advanced Kiosks, Latest Technology Powering The Micro Market Industry

As more consumers around the world are demanding contactless ways to pay for the food and beverages that they want, kiosks have become more important than ever before.

Kiosks offer consumers can order food, beverages, or products without having to physically interaction with another human being.

Advanced Kiosks has led the way at developing the latest kiosk technology to meet the demand of customers in the Covid-19 world. The company has an in-house team of engineers and designers, with more than 20 years of experience, designing kiosks for companies around the world.

What Can A Kiosk Do For Businesses?

Kiosks can be found almost everywhere in 2020, especially in quick–service restaurants and micro–markets. They make it possible for customers to order the products and foods that they want, quickly and efficiently, compared to the amount of time that it would take them to order from a physical employee.

Without having to hire a physical employee to serve customers, businesses can direct employees to focus on other aspects of customer service which will ultimately improve the experience of customers and lead to more growth in the business.

Self-serve kiosk technology was already being developed before Covid-19 and we’ve gradually been prepared for it for years thanks to it being featured in Sci-Fi movies and TV shows. Now that Coronavirus has changed the world, more consumers want a contactless experience, and kiosk technology makes it possible for business owners to give consumers what they want.

Card Access

The idea of using RFID cards for building access control is not a new one. There are a number of systems on the market that will open doors based on reading information off a card, badge or key fob. While providing reasonable security, this method cannot confirm that the person receiving access is the intended card user, making theft or card sharing a potential risk.

Facial Recognition

Building on this idea, a computer kiosk becomes an ideal platform to deploy peripherals on and can be used to validate a visitor’s identity using an AI technique called facial recognition. Facial recognition technology has been sci-fi movie fodder for decades, but now it is seeing a lot of mainstream commercial use. Facial recognition centers around taking a picture from a computer camera and analyzing it to determine if there is a human face in it. Once a face is detected, we can do a lot of interesting things, like match against a database of known faces to determine the person’s identity. Since this is done with a camera, it is a completely contact-free interaction, so no additional sanitization is needed when used in a public space.

Many businesses are following the CDC guidelines that recommend using cloth face coverings as a way to slow the spread of COVID-19. While this would seem to defeat the use of facial recognition technology, in practice there are enough features, also known as nodal points, visible on the exposed parts of the face above the mask for modern recognition algorithms to recognize a person with a high degree of accuracy.

Even before the COVID pandemic hit, airports were looking at using this technique to help improve security. If businesses want to restrict access to only specific known people, combining access control with facial recognition on a computer kiosk is a strong mechanism.

Body Temperature Screening

An elevated body temperature is often an indicator that a person has some type of illness, such as a cold or the flu, and doesn’t meet body temperature regulations in this post-pandemic world. With the current focus on public health and health care technology, there has been a desire to detect if people going through lines might have an elevated temperature and pull them aside for further screening.

This is certainly possible to do in a touchless manner with a health screening kiosk, but it does require some specialized hardware and software to do it. A standard webcam is not sufficient for this. Instead, a thermal camera or thermopile sensor is needed as a temperature monitor to generate a picture using heat instead of light. That picture, or image, is then analyzed to see if the person in it has a body temperature higher than expected. Unlike many thermometers that require touching a person’s forehead, this measurement is done in a touchless manner from a distance of 3 to 5 feet from the device.

Finally, the environment must be considered. This technique only works well indoors where the ambient workplace temperature regulations can be controlled. Trying to measure a person’s body temperature while outdoors on a warm summer day may not provide accurate information. When used in the right circumstances, a body temperature kiosk can provide an additional level of validation, signalling to those nearby that the person in front of the kiosk should at least be spoken to before proceeding.

Automate With Kiosk Technology

What’s ideal about having an advanced kiosk is that besides being an ‘always on’ employee, your kiosk will also run in a Windows 10 environment.

Advanced kiosks also come with the latest software that will enable you to auto restart your kiosk remotely plus other solutions that will let you maximize the functionality and value that your kiosk offers.

To learn more about Advanced Kiosks, and their innovative kiosk technology, visit their website today at www.advancedkiosks.com, contact sales@advancedkiosks.com, 603-865-1000

By Jeff Adair, Editor

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