Tesco trials avocado ripeness scanners

5 dabinat 3 9/3/2025, 7:24:38 PM bbc.com ↗

Comments (3)

arp242 · 10h ago
These seem to be from a company OneThird: https://onethird.io/avocado-scanner

From their website on how it works:

"Every piece of fresh produce has a unique spectral fingerprint. We have collected a vast amount of spectral data for many different varieties and maturity levels. Our system combines this with other data sources and uses AI algorithms to analyze the data and determine what the expected shelf-life is."

So basically, it just looks at the colour. And "AI" because it's 2025.

ahartmetz · 10h ago
RGB is a pretty coarse and narrow sampling of the visible + adjacent light spectrum. Sometimes, using the right wavelength(s) is surprisingly revealing. Unclear if that is the case here - an RGB camera must be by far the cheapest way to get a "spectrum".
dabinat · 7h ago
It does seem like a gimmick to create a tool for something pretty easy to do yourself, but I could see it being useful when someone else is going to the store on your behalf. So you could just put “Avocados, #3 ripeness” on an Instacart order and get exactly what you want.