Electronic retail self-checkout system

The method of any one of the previous claims,

• wherein the scanning unit comprises walls forming a canyon-shaped or tunnel-shaped cavity,
• where the walls comprise one or more item sensors for reading the product tags, the item sensors being in particular RFID sensors and/or optical sensors;
• and
• wherein a side of the scanning unit facing towards the area (210, 212) comprises the person-presence-sensor.

The method according to any one of the previous claims, further comprising:

• receiving, by the portable telecommunication device, authentication data from the customer before the customer has selected any one of the goods for purchase, in particular before, upon or after the user entering a shop;
• upon successful authentication of the customer at the portable telecommunication device, starting, by the portable telecommunication device, a session, whereby the session is associated with a payment source of the customer and wherein within the session the customer has pre-authorized the payment transaction such that the payment transaction will be initialized without any further interaction of the customer with the portable telecommunication device or the checkout-terminal if the time interval is below the threshold, whereby payment transactions are disabled by the portable telecommunication device for the customer upon expiry of the session;
• and
• maintaining the session by the portable telecommunication device until the portable telecommunication device receives one of the following signals:
• a session termination command entered by the customer;
• and/or
• a session termination by time expiration;
• and/or a signal of the server computer that a payment transaction was performed successfully;
• and/or
• a signal of a client application installed on the portable telecommunication device indicating that the customer has left the shop;
• and/or
• a signal of a client application installed on the portable telecommunication device indicating that no beacon signal of sufficient strength is received.

The method according to any one of the previous claims, further comprising generating the terminal-check-in request, the generation comprising:

• continuously while the customer moves within the shop and/or approaches any one of the one or more checkout-terminals:
• receiving, by the portable telecommunication device of the customer, beacon signals from multiple beacons of one or more of the one or more checkout-terminals, the beacon signals comprising information being indicative of the checkout-terminal to which each beacon is assigned;
• determining, by the portable telecommunication device (604), the one of the one or more checkout-terminals being closest to the customer and determining the distance between the customer and to a specified area next to this nearest checkout-terminal as a function of the received beacon signals;
• and upon determining that the distance to the specified area is below a predefined threshold value, automatically generating, by the portable telecommunication device, the terminal-check-in request, the terminal-check-in-request comprising an identifier of the determined nearest checkout-terminal, wherein in particular the distance is determined by using multilateration, in particular by using trilateration.

The method according to any one of the previous claims, the scanning unit comprising a container-presence-sensor, the method further comprising:

• continuously or upon the person-presence-sensor determining that a person has entered a scanning area (210), determining, by the container-presence-sensor, the position of a container having been introduced into a cavity formed by the walls of the scanning unit;
• and
• in case the position and/or orientation of the container is determined to prevent a successful reading of the tags of all goods comprised in the container, preventing initialization of the scanning process and/or outputting a warning that the container is not placed properly in the scanning unit;
• and/or
• in case the position and/or orientation of the container is determined to allow successful reading of the tags of all goods comprised in the container, automatically performing the scanning process and/or enabling the initialization process upon determining that a person has entered a scanning area (212) in spatial proximity to the scanning unit.

The method according to any one of the previous claims, wherein the goods whose product tags are read by the scanning unit are comprised in a container, wherein the container comprises a container-tag which encodes a container-ID, wherein the container-ID is read by the scanning unit together with the information from product tags attached to goods, and wherein the payment-request in addition comprises container-ID, the method further comprising:

• receiving, by the server computer system, a container-registration-request, the container registration request comprising a customer-ID of the one customer and a container-ID of a container to be assigned to the customer for at least the duration of the shopping process;
• and
• evaluating, by the server computer, whether a container-registration-request was received comprising the said container-ID and comprising the customer-ID of the customer for whom the payment transaction is to be initialized;
• and
• performing the initialization of the payment only if this is the case.

An electronic retail self-checkout system comprising:

• one or more checkout-terminals (200, 300, 400, 500, 620, 622, 624) respectively comprising:
• a scanning unit (205) and a person-presence-sensor (312);
• a plurality of beacons (324) per checkout-terminal, wherein a beacon is a hardware transmitter configured to broadcast a signal to nearby portable telecommunication devices (604) for enabling the portable devices to determine their position based on the signals;
• and
• a server computer (612) operatively coupled to portable devices of multiple customers and to one or more checkout-terminals;
• wherein the system is configured for:
• receiving (102), by the server computer, a terminal-check-in request from the portable device of one of the customers, the terminal-check-in request comprising a customer-ID of the customer and comprising beacon signal information indicative of the one of the one or more checkout-terminals where the customer tries to perform the terminal-check-in;
• reading (104), by the scanning unit of the one checkout-terminal, information from product tags attached to goods positioned in and/or within a predefined distance to a cavity of the scanning unit;
• upon determining (106), by the one checkout-terminal via its person-presence-sensor, that a person is present in and/or moves within an area (210, 212) within a predefined spatial proximity of the one checkout-terminal, sending (108) by the one checkout-terminal a payment request to the server computer, the payment request comprising the read tag information and the terminal-ID of the one checkout-terminal;
• receiving (110), by the server computer, the payment request from the checkout-terminal;
• verifying (112), by the server computer, whether a time interval between receiving the terminal-check-in request and the payment request for the same one of the one or more checkout-terminals is below a threshold value;
• and
• only if the time interval is below the threshold, initializing (114), by the server computer, a payment transaction for the customer from whose portable device the terminal-check-in request was received based on information in the payment request.

A portable telecommunication device (604) of a customer, the device comprising:

• an interface for receiving beacon signals emitted by beacons of one or more checkout-terminals;
• a client application configured for:
• receiving, via the interface, the beacon signals emitted by beacons of the one or more checkout-terminals, the beacon signals comprising a terminal-ID of the one of the check-out terminals to which they are assigned;
• determining the one of the one or more checkout-terminals being closest to the customer;
• determining the distance between the customer and a specified area next to this closest checkout-terminal as a function of the received beacon signals;
• and
• upon determining that the distance to the specified area is below a predefined threshold value, automatically generating a terminal-check-in request, the terminal-check-in-request comprising an identifier of the determined nearest checkout-terminal, wherein in particular the distance is determined by using multilateration, in particular by using trilateration;
• and
• sending the terminal-check-in request via a network connection to a server, the terminal-check-in request comprising a terminal-ID of the identified nearest checkout-terminal and a customer-ID.