Project
# | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
22 | Smart Shopping Cart |
Di Fan Xuyang Yao Ying He |
appendix0.pdf design_document0.pdf final_paper0.pdf presentation0.presentation proposal0.pdf |
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The project aims to build a smart shopping cart that could follow the customer automatically by frequently tracking the customer's position. A signal receiver is embedded into the cart to provide information for the control unit to determine the cart's speed and route, and where it should stop. In case that the cart may be trapped in some narrow passages, an alarm will sound when the cart falls too much behind. Sensors are built in the cart to detect stationary objects such as shelves and walls. The cart will try to avoid them by making slight changes to its direction until it finds an accessible path. In addition, the cart is also able to track other moving objects. When the cart detects a moving obstacle in its way, the control unit makes the decision based on the following scheme: the cart always slows down to yield to customers, and it also slows down if other carts are moving at higher speeds; if the obstacle still presents at about one braking distance away, the cart needs to make a stop and it restarts until the way is cleared. The smart shopping cart also functions as a GPS that leads customers to the goods they are looking for. Four signal sources are placed at each corner of the store so that the cart could track its position by comparing the distances from those sources. Moreover, the cart is able to calculate the actual size of the store. Basic layout of the store is depicted based on the relative distances from the four signal sources. In this way, the cart can generate an actual map based on the map we design in a relative scale. A board with buttons representing different goods serves as the user interface for the cart. Customers can push these buttons to enter a shopping list. If they choose to enter items one by one, the cart will lead them to the product before they could enter a new one. If they put the entire list all at once, the cart is expected to figure out the most efficient path that covers all products they enter. |