Contactless drive through facility having an order management system

A method for providing and operating a drive through facility for ordering and retrieving goods in a contactless manner, the method comprising:

• providing a set of parking bays aligned substantially in parallel, wherein each parking bay is dimensioned to accommodate a customer vehicle therein;
• providing first and second overhead wires traversing the set of parking bays, wherein the first and second overhead wires are spaced apart from each other;
• providing a set of order processing units moveably suspended from the first overhead wire;
• providing a carrier member moveably suspended from the second overhead wire;
• and
• providing an order management system configured to operate:
• each order processing unit from the set of order processing units for facilitating an order placing process and a payment process by corresponding customer vehicle;
• and
• the carrier member for moving a set of delivery containers fulfilling corresponding ones of one or more orders placed using the set of order processing units.

A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

• detect a parking of a customer vehicle in a parking bay;
• detect a location, including elevation, of a driver, or passenger, side window of the customer vehicle with reference to identifiers of a video camera that captured an image frame of the customer vehicle and the location of the customer vehicle within the image frame;
• move an order processing unit to the driver, or passenger, side window of the customer vehicle based on the detected location;
• receive an order from an occupant of the customer vehicle by the order processing unit;
• request the occupant of the customer vehicle to make payment to the order processing unit for a calculated total bill for the received order;
• receive payment for the calculated total bill from the occupant of the customer vehicle by the order processing unit;
• transmit details of the received order from the order processing unit to an order management system for preparing one or more goods, or items, and deliver the one or more goods, or items, to a loading area;
• load a carrier member with the one or more goods, or items, corresponding to one or more received orders at the loading area;
• move the carrier member to a location of a closest customer vehicle from which one of the orders was received;
• lower the one or more goods, or items, using a delivery container corresponding to the received order to a driver, or passenger, side window of the customer vehicle;
• detect retrieval of the delivery container by the occupants of the closest customer vehicle;
• move the carrier member to a location of a subsequent customer vehicle from which a subsequent order was received;
• and
• return the carrier member to the loading area on delivering the delivery containers to each customer vehicle from which the subsequent order was received.