Authors:
Hye Suk Makley, Nayetta Jacobs, Marcus McDowell
Abstract:
This Disclosure proposes a solution to the issue of running out of space in a shopping cart. This disclosure proposes a method to adjust the cart to a larger basket size as needed to meet the shopper's needs.
Background:
You run into the grocery store to get few items from the list, so you grab a small shopping cart.
But once you start shopping, you see great deals or other items you remember you needed that were not on the list. Now you are running out of space in the shopping cart, so you have to either go get a larger cart or play a balancing game to try to fit what you can into the limited space.
This disclosure addresses this issue, where the cart can be adjusted to a larger basket size as you shop and as you need with a click of a button.
Description:
The shopping cart basket area can be adjusted to either 'medium size' or 'large size' depending on how much space you need for your shopping experience. There is built in button on the shopping cart handle where you can choose the required size to expand the shopping cart space to allow more room for items purchased.
The smaller cart size is ideal for storing the carts for store owners, as you can stack more carts this way, but at the same time, it also gives freedom to shoppers by giving them the larger shopping cart size as they need them.
Another option is when the cart extends to larger size, the extended part is separate area, thus giving option to the shoppers to separate their items or by order, if they are purchasing stuff for someone else from what they are buying. This saves on cost of having to have different size shopping carts.
Few differences/advantages to our idea versus existing solutions are:
1. The horizontal extension allows customers the ability to separate orders if shopping for multiple orders.
2. The horizontal extension allows for less space to store unused shopping carts, as when in short mode, it takes up less space to stack them together, as seen in stores.
3. The horizontal extension is more user friendly, as depth stays the same to place/reach items in the cart.
See below images for better view of this idea
Claims:
Ability to extend the shopping carts as you shop, for either needing more space or needing to separate orders.
TGCS Reference 2940
