Systems and methods for recognizing and identifying items located on the lower shelf of a shopping cart in a checkout lane of a retail store environment for the purpose of reducing or preventing loss or fraud and increasing the efficiency of a checkout process. The system includes one or more visual sensors that can take images of items and a computer system that receives the images from the one or more visual sensors and automatically identifies the items. The system can be trained to recognize the items using images taken of the items. The system relies on matching visual features from training images to match against features extracted from images taken at the checkout lane. Using the scale-invariant feature transformation (SIFT) method, for example, the system can compare the visual features of the images to the features stored in a database to find one or more matches, where the found one or more matches are used to identify the items.

Claims

15 · 5 independent · depth 3

15 granted claims

›1.independentA system for checking out merchandise, comprising:nat least one visual sensor for capturing an image of an object on a cart; wherein the at least one …+9

›2.↳ 1The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one visual sensor is a digital camera with a charge-coupled-device (CCD) imager, a complementary metal-oxi…d2

›3.↳ 1The system of claim 1, wherein the subsystem comprises:na checkout subsystem configured to receive visual data from the at least one visual sensor,a s…d2+3

›7.↳ 1The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of extracted visual features and the plurality of visual features associated with the plurality of known …d2

›8.↳ 1The system of claim 1, wherein the cart comprises a shopping cart.d2+1

›10.↳ 1The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one visual sensor comprises one or more cameras directed to a checkout lane.d2

›11.independentA system for checking out merchandise in a shopping cart, comprising:nat least one visual sensor for capturing an image of the merchandise in the shop…

›12.independentA computer readable medium in a merchandise checkout system embodying program code with instructions for recognizing an object, the merchandise checko…

›13.independentA system for checking out merchandise, comprising:nat least one visual sensor for capturing an image of one or more objects on a cart; wherein the at …

›14.independentA method for checking out merchandise, the method comprising:ncapturing an image of one or more objects on a shopping cart; wherein the image is captu…+1

Classifications

2 codes

IPC · International Patent Classification

Section G — Physics

G06K15/00

USPC · US Patent Classification

235/383

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Pendency

4.2 y

1,526 days filing → grant

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2 RCE

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Examiner

Seung H Lee

art unit 2887 · TC 2800

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Citations: 20 back · 0 forward

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1 priority documents

›Priority documents — 1

Type	Document	Date
related publication	US 20060283943 A1	21 Dec 2006

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