Physical shopping chart-to-mobile device associations

A system for providing and managing associations between mobile computing device and physical shopping carts used in retail stores, the system comprising:

• a physical shopping cart that is configured to transport physical goods around a store, wherein the physical shopping cart includes:
• a product detection system that is programmed to detect products that are placed in the physical shopping cart,
• a wireless transceiver to wirelessly communicate with other devices, and
• a cart identifier that uniquely identifies the physical shopping cart;
• a mobile computing device that is programmed (i) to obtain the cart identifier for the shopping cart, (ii) to establish an association with the physical shopping cart using the cart identifier, and (iii) once the association between the physical shopping cart and the mobile computing device has been established, to output a user interface that provides a real-time summary of the products in the physical shopping cart;
• and
• a remote server system to manage associations between physical shopping carts and mobile computing devices, wherein the remote server system includes:
• a cart-to-device association database that stores current cart-to-device associations between physical shopping carts and mobile computing devices;
• wherein the remote server system is programmed (i) to receive an association request from the mobile computing device that includes the cart identifier for the physical shopping cart and an identifier for the mobile computing device, (ii) to query the cart-to-device association database to determine whether the physical shopping cart is free to be associated with the mobile computing device, (iii) in response to determining that the shopping cart is free to be associated with the mobile computing device, to add the association between the mobile computing device and the physical shopping cart to the cart-to-device association database,
• wherein the mobile computing device is further programmed to (i) receive a user input of initiating a checkout process for the physical shopping cart, (ii) determine whether the mobile computing device has left a geofensed area that is associated with a store where the physical shopping cart is located, (iii) determine whether a first amount of time that has elapsed since the mobile computing device was physically proximate to the physical shopping cart, and (iv) determine a distance between the mobile computing device and the physical shopping cart, and
• wherein the remote server system is further programmed to:
• (i) receive, from the mobile computing device, (a) data representative of the user input of initiating the checkout process, (b) data representative of determination whether the mobile device has left the geofensed area, (c) data representative of determination whether the first amount of time that has elapsed, and (d) data representative of the distance between the mobile computing device and the physical shopping cart,
• (ii) based on the checkout process that was initiated by the user having completed, update the cart-to-device association database to indicate that the association is broken between the mobile computing device and the physical shopping cart,
• (iii) based on the checkout process not having been completed and further on the mobile computing device having left the geofensed area, update the cart-to-device association database to indicate that the association is broken between the mobile computing device and the physical shopping cart,
• (iv) based on the checkout process not having been completed, further on the mobile computing device not having left the geofensed area, and further on the first amount of time being greater than a threshold period of time, update the cart-to-device association database to indicate that the association is broken between the mobile computing device and the physical shopping cart, and
• (v) based on the checkout process not having been completed, further on the mobile computing device not having left the geofensed area, further on the first amount of time not being greater than the threshold period of time, and further on the distance between the mobile computing device and the physical shopping cart exceeding a threshold proximity, update the cart-to-device association database to indicate that the association is broken between the mobile computing device and the physical shopping cart.