Authors:
Jose Moya Hernandez, Luis Cervantes, Ivan Gonzalez, Angel Perez, Miguel Rodriguez, Eduardo Vaca
Abstract:
Electronic shelf labels (ESL) usually show the price of the items on the shelves, but they can be reconfigured to show any other information, thus these devices are coveted by thieves. The idea described in this disclosure provides a method to identify when an ESL has been moved from it's assigned location based on the information collected by the customer’s basket carts and the comparison of this information against the assigned ESL location stored in a database.
Background:
Due to the size of the ESLs, they are easy to steal and the stores are losing money replacing stolen ESLs and the time lost reconfiguring the new ones.
There are some patents with ideas to detect if someone has stolen an ESL, but these ideas don't include the use of basket carts to identify if the ESLs were stolen.
Description:
Basket carts have electromagnetic signal detectors, a GPS or other location device, and a module to establish communication with a server in the store.
Each ESL emits an electromagnetic signal (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.). Each electromagnetic signal has an identifier associated with the ESL. The signal is weak to avoid interference with all the other signals in the store, but strong enough to reach the electromagnetic signal detectors in the basket carts.
A database with information of the location of each ESL inside the store is present in the store.
The basket cart detects the identifier of each ESL and sends this information to the server along with the current location of the basket cart.
The server validates that ESL is in the correct location considering the basket cart's current location and the ESL's assigned location defined on the database.
If the server detects a missing ESL after receiving the report from the basket cart, emits an alert to the security personnel.
If the server detects an ESL in another place of the store, emits an alert to the security personnel to search for the ESL near the place where the server detected the anomaly.
Related Prior Art:
Storage cart providing item storage verification.
TGCS Reference 4043
