System and methods for merchandise checkout
US7100824B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Dec 27, 2004 |
| Grant date | Sep 5, 2006 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Dec 27, 2024 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG08B13/19671
- WIPO fieldControl
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
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.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.