Authors:
Vikrant Maheshwari, Rajinikanth Chimarla, Vipul Chotaliya, Michael Chrahan, Jamal Khan, Paul Scrutton
Abstract:
This disclosure proposes smart flooring and camera systems that can detect spills and change the floor color. An alert can be sent to store personnel and a color indicator can be lit to illuminate the area on floor Low emitting sounds can help customers avoid the affected area.
Background:
In Retail Stores often there are spills or dropped materials on the floor. These spills can be hazardous for customers as well as store personnel. Some method to detect these spills and notify store personnel would improve the safety and cleanliness of the store.
Description:
Smart flooring that can change floor color is proposed to assist in detecting spills. An alert can be sent to store personnel and the color indicator lit to illuminate area on floor, low emitting sound can help customers avoid the affected area.
o floor or tiles will have embedded sensor/s to detect spillage
o they can also detect glass breaks using sound sensors
o the base floor need not be smart, we can have a thin film of sensor which can be stuck to the floor
o smart light can turn to yellow/red- and a warning sign or caution sign be put up.
o produce sounds to warn/alert /visually impaired customers to avoid the hazardous area.
o may also detect the type of material spilled
- known configuration of spilled material
- based on vicinity of materials kept to the spill location
Alert store personnel for the incident location in-store or outside via some alert system or other monitoring tools.
o And accordingly send job description to nearby installed robot do to the cleanup, the smart floor color change can have "warning wet floor" type of words also written on it.
Store smart cameras can be used to detect that color change and zoom in to check store smart flooring to detect the type of spill.
Reflection:
o Cameras can use a reflected image top/bottom would indicate the presence of a spill due to reflection from the spilled product.
o Unless the floor is very, very shiny, the camera would not normally see the equal but opposite reflection of an area in the floor. Detecting this reflection indicates something shiny on the floor, presumably a puddle.
Refraction:
o The lines on the floor or design on the tile will look off by some amount than its regular axis. This can be detected by the camera when comparing frames to frames.
Use a store camera to get a frame of a picture of the area where public movement is not in a regular pattern to check if it is due to some spillover on the floor or there are other obstacles that need to be cleared/removed and accordingly alert store associate or robot.
Camera -
The smart camera sends a notification to store robotic management system or store management with location and type of spill:
- for water-type of spill it will send an in-store installed robot job description and robot which is near the spill site can be activated with the command to do the mopping and wet floor alert(caution) sign.
- for bottle break type of spill it will send a job description to the robot will do the mopping and on-floor bottle break pickup.
- raw spills like sugar or rice will send job description robot for the vacuum that area.
- for produce, it will send the job description to the robot for pick up the produce from floor and put it in a basket for clean-up and re-stocking.
- Some of the newer trendy supermarket stores are allowing you to drink beer while you shop, so there are more possibilities for spillage there.
Smart camera also programmed for fall detection of something like from an infants water/milk bottle falls on the floor which can be detected by the camera and a robot will be sent to clean up the area.
TGCS Reference 2473
