Where is the future of Touch Screen Kiosks heading? It wasn't so long ago that having a kiosk that checked out your shopping at the supermarket seemed like a futuristic daydream, and in a short space of time most supermarket giants like Tescos, Sainsburys and Asda have installed self service kiosks in their stores. Consumers are now accustomed to ATMs dispensing cash and self check-out aisles in supermarkets and expect self-service options in other parts of their lives. Go to any of the mainline train stations and you'll find banks of self-service ticketing kiosks to speed up the process of buying your train ticket.

However, innovation with kiosks is far from over. So where will the humble Kiosk take us next?

The next generation Kiosks are improving our customer service by greeting visitor and customers to our offices or businesses in the form of virtual receptionists. Kiosks with virtual reception functionality can greet visitors and direct them to where they should wait. They can even book meeting rooms and notify colleagues when a guest has arrived - the only thing the virtual receptionist can't do is to make the visitor a cup of coffee, however the kiosk can direct the visitor to the coffee making facilities.

Avatars can be used to present a friendly face to interact with and provide information about your products and services. It also gives the impression of a cutting edge business with the latest technology and with all modern facilities.

Not only can kiosks organise visitors and customer but they also make for efficient selling devices at the fraction of the cost of training a new member of staff for the job. Take for example a sports shop, a kiosk can be programmed to have all the relevant information at the touch of a finger about every product in store. Not only that but the kiosk could also provide reviews, videos and images. This means that customers are given all the required information about a product so that they can make an informed choice about the purchase that they would like to make - thus reducing the number of customer leaving the store empty handed. By including card reader and receipt printers your customers can complete the sales transaction without ever going to a traditional till or payment area.

So how much further could the advancements be on an information point kiosk like the ports one described above? Well one leap forwards would be to enable the customer to have a good look at the product on the screen. When you see a product in a video of on a photo you don't always get to see the small detail. To achieve this a product could be mapped in to create a three dimensional picture of the item, then customers could mover the product around on the screen, flipping it over and turning it through a whole 360 degrees as if they were holding the product in their hands. Enabling this functionality on a kiosk would mean that whilst the customer is examining the item they are still able to ask the kiosk questions.

It is common knowledge that customers do have a tendency to loose interest and exist the shop whilst members of staff fetch products that the customer might be interested in. However the kiosk can 'fetch' the item in an instant and maintain the customer's interest.

New ways of interacting with kiosks are becoming available already with multi-touch touchscreens, 3d displays, face recognition and movement recognition. Keyboards can be projected onto a flat surface and so requires no physical keyboard. Kiosks can be linked with Bluetooth radios to broadcast adverts to customers' phones.

While the kiosk market is seeing significant growth now, the future holds some amazing possibilities for us all.