Communications: electrical – Continuously variable indicating – With meter reading
Patent
1994-01-11
1995-06-20
Yusko, Donald J.
Communications: electrical
Continuously variable indicating
With meter reading
34082554, 235378, 235383, 235472, H04Q 900, G06K 700
Patent
active
054264235
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to methods and to apparatuses for registering (which term should be understood as meaning taking into account and totalizing the prices of articles purchased) and checking articles, and a particularly important (though not exclusive) application thereof lies in self-service super- and hypermarkets.
At present, a major complaint made by the customers of large stores of this type is the waiting time at the checkout, as made necessary by the need to check articles purchased one by one, to register them, and to pay for them. By using scanning devices for optically reading the bar codes carried by each article, a considerable saving in time is obtained by avoiding the need for the clerk to key in each individual article code or price on the checkout machine. However, because each article is verified by an employee, such a solution is merely a palliative since the time taken by each customer to pass through the checkout is substantially proportional to the number of articles purchased, given that payment time generally represents only a small fraction of the total time spent at the checkout. Taking account of articles purchased requires all of them to be placed on a moving surface, each of them to be verified individually, and then they need to be reloaded.
Another source of dissatisfaction is the near impossibility for a customer to check that the price actually taken into account does indeed correspond to that shown on the shelves. Finally, customers are reticent because they can evaluate the amount they are going to need to pay only quite approximately until the total is displayed at the checkout.
Apparatuses that have been proposed in the past for enabling customers to do their own checking before reaching the checkout solve the second problem in part only and have no effect on the first.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the invention to to provide a method and apparatus that satisfy practical requirements better than those known in the past, in particular in that they avoid the drawbacks mentioned above, or at least they attenuate them.
For this purpose, the invention provides in particular a method whereby, given that each article contains a microcircuit having means for picking up high frequency energy and for responding by transmitting a modulated high frequency message representing an identification signature for the article: an article is taken into account by exciting its microcircuit by applying a high frequency signal thereto that provides it with energy and that interrogates it to cause it to transmit the modulated signal of the signature, the modulated signal is picked up by means including a memory for making the signatures of articles correspond to their prices, the price of the interrogated article is stored and displayed, and the price of the article is added to the price of any articles that may previously have been taken into account.
This method may be implemented in numerous different ways.
In a first implementation, which requires the customer to perform an operation in addition to transferring the selected article from a shelf to a receptacle, the microcircuit in each article is individually excited in turn by passing the article through a read location where it receives an interrogation code common to all of the articles, with each microcircuit being designed to make itself inert after transmitting its code, and all of the purchased articles contained in the receptacle are caused to pass through a location where a high frequency excitation and interrogation field extends, thereby enabling the presence of microcircuits that have not been rendered inert to be detected.
A circuit may be rendered inert automatically after it has finished transmitting its code. However, to limit the risks of error and of fraud, it is preferable to cause circuits to render themselves inert by subjecting a microcircuit to a high frequency field that is modulated with a special code which is transmitted only after the price of the article has been
REFERENCES:
patent: 4663625 (1987-05-01), Yewen
patent: 4766295 (1988-08-01), Davis et al.
patent: 4862160 (1989-08-01), Ekchian et al.
patent: 5005125 (1991-04-01), Farrar et al.
patent: 5149947 (1992-09-01), Collins, Jr.
Henri Perrin
Raimbault Pierre
Merz Edward
Yusko Donald J.
LandOfFree
Process and device for registering and checking items does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Process and device for registering and checking items, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Process and device for registering and checking items will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-1847231