Authors:
Susan Brosnan, Jessica Snead, Patricia Hogan, Daniel Goins
Abstract:
An idea is presented to provide an indication on where the barcode is located to help the shopper or cashier find the barcode and orient the item the correct way so the scanner can see the barcode.
Background:
Sometimes shoppers using self-service checkout or cashiers on an attended lane have trouble finding the barcode on an item, so they are wasting time twisting, flipping, and turning the item to try and find the barcode. This is particularly troublesome when the item is a heavy item like a case of soda.
Our idea is to provide an indication on where the barcode is to help the shopper or cashier find the barcode and orient the item the correct way so the scanner can see the barcode.
Description:
Our idea is to provide an indication on where the barcode is to help the shopper or cashier find the bar code and orient the item right way so the scanner can see the barcode.
To highlight the barcode on the item packaging:
- there could be a black light hanging over the checkout lane, or black light in the scanner/scale or black light in the handheld scanner,
- the bar code could be printed on paper that fluoresces under black light so the bar code lights up and the shopper can see the glow and know which way to orient the six-pack of soda so that the bar code is visible to the scanner.
- Other ways of doing this would to be other light wavelengths/frequencies that excite ions in the bar code label a different way but still cause the label to change color or fluoresce to draw attention to the bar code location
In an alternate embodiment:
Not only could we have some light source for the checkout lane area that is causing the bar code label to glow, but we could also have cameras watching the checkout area and Video Analytics could recognize the glowing area and show a picture (photo or drawing) on the checkout screen with an arrow pointing to where the bar code is.
In this embodiment, the camera would not need to be good enough to recognize the item or be connected to some item predication database. It could simply show a basic shape representing the item with the glowing part.
It could even recognize the glowing within the boundaries of the checkout area and highlight the glowing area in a picture using the checkout area’s image/dimensions.
In another alternate embodiment:
A camera may exist that is sufficient do item recognition and suggest what the item is. If the camera could fully recognize the item and add it to the order, then we wouldn't need to scan the bar code at all (just click the correct suggestion).
But the usefulness of this could come in where the system recognizes the basic category of the packaged good, but not some key attribute to make the best selection. For instance, a camera might recognize the item is yoghurt but not which flavor the yoghurt is (in the 47 different flavors!).
In this case, If we have a camera good enough to do item recognition, then the system could look up an item file of like items and identify the new item file attribute that lists where on the item packaging the bar code is, so that an image of the item and where on the packaging the bar code is, can be shown on the checkout screen. The Point of Sale checkout screen would show the barcode is on the lid. The customer then scans the bar code and now the POS system knows the shopper is buying blueberry yoghurt. The idea for this embodiment is to add useful information to the item file that can help speed up checkout scanning time.
TGCS Reference 3081
