Automatically establishing sessions between users and shopping carts

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed, cause a computer system to perform operations comprising:

• receiving device sensor data describing a set of measurements of a client device by a first set of sensors, wherein the client device is associated with a user;
• receiving cart sensor data describing a set of measurements of a shopping cart by a second set of sensors coupled to the shopping cart;
• detecting a plurality of action events based on the cart sensor data, wherein each action event indicates an action has been taken with respect to the shopping cart, and wherein each action event is associated with a timestamp;
• determining a plurality of distances by, for each of the plurality of action events, computing a distance between the client device and the shopping cart at the timestamp associated with the action event, wherein each distance is computed based on the received device sensor data and the received cart sensor data;
• comparing the plurality of distances to the plurality of action events to compute a measure of correlation between the plurality of distances and the plurality of action events;
• determining that the measure of correlation exceeds a threshold value;
• responsive to the measure of correlation exceeding the threshold value, establishing a session between the client device and the shopping cart;
• and
• assigning, in a session database stored on a server of an online system, a unique session identifier to the shopping cart, the user, and the plurality of action events.