System for promoting the returning of service carts, e.g....

Check-actuated control mechanisms – Control mechanism actuated by check – other than coin – which... – Having means to test physical characteristic of check

Reexamination Certificate

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Details

C194S905000, C340S568500

Reexamination Certificate

active

06206165

ABSTRACT:

TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a returning system for service carts, said system comprising electronic monitoring of the movements of said carts through an activity area.
The present invention is particularly directed to the problem of promoting the returning of service carts, e.g. shopping carts, for transporting commodities in an activity area, e.g. shopping centers, said carts after having been fetched from a collection station and after having been available for the transportation of commodities, should be returned to a collection station to be used again.
BACKGROUND ART
Experience has shown that it is costly and time-consuming to let the staff collect service carts that have been used. For this reason, the practice has been introduced in many places of making a service cart available solely upon payment of a deposit, being refunded when the cart is returned. This practice is, however, by the users often experienced as a rather complicated course of action. Systems comprising both electronic monitoring and payment of a deposit are known from the International Patent Applications No. WO 84104660 and No. WO 97/11441.
WO 84/04660 discloses a system, in which the electronic monitoring serves to ascertain whether a service cart belongs to a predetermined collection station, after which a deposit has to be paid in order to get the service cart free for use in an activity area.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,119,087 discloses a deposit free system in which each cart is provided with a target, while a sensor detects the return of a shopping cart to a cart-returning station. According to a counter system, aprize is awarded to the person returning the shopping cart to the returning station.
WO 97/11441 discloses a system specially adapted for lending and re-parking of service carts from different shops. The system is based upon the payment of a refund of at least part of a lending deposit when the cart is returned.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
It is the object of the invention to provide a system that is adapted to make the returning of a service cart attractive for the user without having to involve her or him in a deposit system.
This object is achieved with a system of the kind referred to initially, according to the present invention being constructed and adapted in the manner set forth in the characterizing clause of claim
1
.
With such a system it is not only possible to record the returning of the service cart, but it is also possible, via the signal director and the indicator and based upon the recording of the cart having been carried out, to allocate a reward for the returning of a service cart having been borrowed, to users, groups of users or even individually selected users, so as to make it attractive for the users to return the service carts in a proper manner, with consequently improved utilization of the capacity of the available fleet of carts.
Further, the use of a central signal director makes it possible in the system to incorporate a winner frequency, determining to how many of the service carts in circulation a reward prize is to be allocated. The same means may be used to take account of the period of time, during which the service cart has been present in the activity area between the time of collection and the time of returning. It is e.g. possible to reduce, or even eliminate completely, the winner chances for carts for which only very short residence periods have been recorded, and increase them for carts not having been returned e.g. even after several hours, and for this reason must be presumed as having been left on e.g. parking lot. If so, an increased winner chance could motivate a third party to return the service cart in a proper manner and so reap a reward in the form of a prize.
Especially in those cases, in which the system comprises a number of collection stations for service carts, e.g. both out-of-doors and indoors, the system according to an embodiment of the invention also makes it possible, e.g. by director control of a number of indicators, to influence the flow of service carts in such a manner that it is possible to restrict or even completely avoid local accumulations of carts and consequently necessary manual transfers of greater number of carts during the day from one collection station to another.
The recording of service carts, upon which the system according to an embodiment of the invention is based, can also prevent service carts belonging to other systems from entering the system according to the invention without the requisite basic registration, even though such carts, technically speaking, were equipped in the same manner as the carts according to the invention.
It will be possible to vary the prize signals from the signal director at any time, both in the course of a single day and in the course of longer periods, e.g. a week.
Further, the system according to an embodiment of the invention makes it possible to include data relating to purchases having been made, both with regard to type and quantity of goods, in an evaluation of the type and extent of a reward, by having a stationary electronic recording apparatus adapted and connected in the manner set forth in claim
2
.
Further advantageous embodiments, the effects of which are explained in the following detailed part of the present description, are set forth in claims
3
and
4
.


REFERENCES:
patent: 5119087 (1992-06-01), Lucas
patent: 5402106 (1995-03-01), DiPaolo et al.
patent: 5485006 (1996-01-01), Allen et al.
patent: 5646616 (1997-07-01), Komatsu
patent: 5921373 (1999-07-01), Amdahl et al.
patent: 31 12 655 (1982-10-01), None
patent: 84/04660 (1984-12-01), None
patent: 85/00961 (1985-03-01), None
patent: 97/11441 (1997-03-01), None

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