Smart vending machine
AssigneeCellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless
InventorsRahim Charania, Alex Hoyos, Kevin Lim, Ramesh Marimuthu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A vending machine includes a product dispensing unit and a transceiver configured to communicate via a network. The vending machine further includes a first user interface disposed at a first location on a face of the vending machine and configured to permit users to engage in vending operations so as to cause the dispensing unit to dispense products from the vending machine, and a second user interface disposed at a second location on the face of the vending machine and configured to display information received via the transceiver. The transceiver may include a wireless transceiver and the network may include a cellular network.
Claims22
A vending machine, comprising:
- a product dispensing unit;
- a first transceiver configured to communicate via a network;
- a first user interface disposed at a first location on a face of the vending machine and configured to permit users to engage in vending operations so as to cause the dispensing unit to dispense products from the vending machine;
- and
- a second user interface disposed at a second location on the face of the vending machine and configured to display information received via the first transceiver.
A vending machine, comprising:
- a product dispensing unit;
- a wireless transceiver configured to communicate via a cellular network;
- a Wi-Fi transceiver configured to communicate via a wireless local area network (LAN) with one or more mobile devices based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard;
- a first touch screen display disposed at a first location on a face of the vending machine and configured to permit users to engage in vending operations so as to cause the dispensing unit to dispense products from the vending machine;
- and
- a second touch screen display disposed at a second location on the face of the vending machine and configured to display advertising or announcements received via the wireless transceiver over the cellular network.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.