HOUSTON - Could checking out at the grocery store become even faster? Researchers at Rice University think it could with EZ tag technology, KTRK-TV reports.

EZ tags make driving on toll roads easier, if you have one, and translating that technology to grocery products could make checking out a breeze. Basically, the electronic tags would replace bar codes on the products and a reader would instantly total the groceries the moment the shopper approaches the checkout register.

"This is an ink made out of carbon nano tubes and other carbon structures," said Dr. James Tour, chemistry professor at Rice University. Millions of carbon nanotubes are hiding unseen in the ink and those nanotubes would be affixed onto packages much like an RFID tag.

At checkout, the register would read the RFID tags automatically without the shopper unloading the cart. A total would be provided within seconds.

"Instead of a bar code you would have an RFID tag and that RFID tag would immediately give out information, so if you are going out the checkout line, you don??t have to hold [the item] up to a little scanner," said Tour.

However, this technology is still in the early stages and implementation at the retail level is years away. "Probably about five years because this is about three times larger than the size of a bar code and we have to cram this down to about one third of its size," said Tour.

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