A payment terminal with a housing having a planar upper face with an extension forming an angle θ.sub.2 between 30 and 50° with the planar face for receiving a contactless reading device, another end of the planar face comprising a magnetic stripe card reader and receiving, in a slot located above the magnetic stripe card reader and forming an angle θ.sub.1 between 30 and 50° with the planar face, a contact chip card reader, the terminal comprising a main circuit board comprising a controller and memory, the controller for controlling a display device displaying a keyboard and card reading, the board comprises a connector for a contact card reader oriented with the angle θ.sub.1 with the planar card surface and a flexible connector for connecting a wired antenna for reading of contactless payment means with the angle θ.sub.2 with the planar card surface.

Methods and apparatuses are provided for use in monitoring product placement within a shopping facility. Some embodiments provide an apparatus configured to determine product placement conditions within a shopping facility, comprising: a transceiver configured to wirelessly receive communications; a product monitoring control circuit coupled with the transceiver; a memory coupled with the control circuit and storing computer instructions that when executed by the control circuit cause the control circuit to: obtain a composite three-dimensional (3D) scan mapping corresponding to at least a select area of the shopping facility and based on a series of 3D scan data; evaluate the 3D scan mapping to identify multiple product depth distances; and identify, from the evaluation of the 3D scan mapping, when one or more of the multiple product depth distances is greater than a predefined depth distance threshold from the reference offset distance of the product support structure.

A radio frequency identification (RFID) system includes an array of antennas to distinguish line-of-sight (LOS) paths from non-line-of-sight (NLOS) paths. The distance between adjacent antennas in the array of antennas is less than half the wavelength of the radio frequency (RF) signal of the system. Each antenna in the antenna array is also digitally controlled to change relative phase difference among the antennas, thereby allowing digital steering of the array of antennas across angles of arrival (AOAs) between 0 and 71 The digital steering generates a plot of signal amplitudes as a function of AOAs. LOS paths are distinguished from NLOS paths based on the shapes (e.g., depth, gradient, etc.) of local extremes (e.g., maxima or minima) in the plot.

A radio frequency identification (RFID) system includes an array of antennas to distinguish line-of-sight (LOS) paths from non-line-of-sight (NLOS) paths. The distance between adjacent antennas in the array of antennas is less than half the wavelength of the radio frequency (RF) signal of the system. Each antenna in the antenna array is also digitally controlled to change relative phase difference among the antennas, thereby allowing digital steering of the array of antennas across angles of arrival (AOAs) between 0 and π. The digital steering generates a plot of signal amplitudes as a function of AOAs. LOS paths are distinguished from NLOS paths based on the shapes (e.g., depth, gradient, etc.) of local extremes (e.g., maxima or minima) in the plot.

Systems, devices, apparatuses, and methods are described for providing robust RFID security and secure targeted information dissemination. Randomized identifiers for RFID tags associated with products for sale are read by readers of user devices having their own randomized identifiers. Information relating to the products is provided to the user devices by information retrieval systems without exposing information related to the user device or a user thereof. Information security is provided through the use of the randomized identifiers that act as proxies or surrogates for users and user devices. Based on the products and associated RFID tags read by the user device, a retailer or manufacturer provides targeted advertising and sales incentives to the user device through the information retrieval system.

A method of a digital identity system generating a sharing token for authenticating a bearer to a validator, wherein a data store of the digital identity system holds a plurality of attributes of the bearer, the method comprising implementing by the digital identity system the following steps: receiving at the digital identity system from a bearer an electronic sharing token request, wherein the token request identifies at least one of the bearer's attributes in the data store selected for sharing with a validator; in response to the electronic token request, generating a sharing token, which is unique to that request, for presentation by the bearer to a validator; associating with the unique sharing token at the digital identity system the identified at least one bearer attribute; and issuing to the bearer the unique sharing token; and wherein later presentation of the unique sharing token to the digital identify system by a validator causes the at least one bearer attribute associated with the sharing token to be rendered available to the validator by the digital identity system.

The specification describes methods and systems for processing information. An exemplary method includes reading, by a computing device through a near field communication (NFC) interface, an electronic tag to obtain product information stored in the electronic tag; storing, by the computing device, the product information in the computing device; generating, by the computing device, an order based on the stored product information; receiving, by the computing device, a settlement file after the order is paid, wherein the settlement file comprises a user identification (ID) and a user credit score corresponding to the user ID; and transmitting, by the computing device, the settlement file to a server for verification based on the user credit score.

Apparatuses, components and methods are provided herein useful to provide assistance to customers and/or workers in a shopping facility. In some embodiments, a shopping facility personal assistance system comprises: a plurality of motorized transport units located in and configured to move through a shopping facility space; a plurality of user interface units, each corresponding to a respective motorized transport unit during use of the respective motorized transport unit; and a central computer system having a network interface such that the central computer system wirelessly communicates with one or both of the plurality of motorized transport units and the plurality of user interface units, wherein the central computer system is configured to control movement of the plurality of motorized transport units through the shopping facility space based at least on inputs from the plurality of user interface units.

An embodiment of the present invention comprises, a play kitchen toy body in which toy cooking tools form one set, a playhouse set, which is a set of toy tools to be used for cooking in a play kitchen by using the play kitchen toy body, a user terminal by which a user uses a play kitchen through the play kitchen toy body and the playhouse set, and in which a play kitchen assistant application is installed, the application extracting a unique toy number of the toy tools of the playhouse set so as to transmit same together with a play kitchen type to a play kitchen assistant server, and receiving, from the play kitchen assistant server, play kitchen assistant content matched to the unique toy number and outputting same, the play kitchen assistant server extracting play kitchen guide content matched to the play kitchen type and the unique toy number received from the user terminal so as to provide same to the user terminal, and a mirror coupled to a toy sink included in the play kitchen toy body, wherein the user terminal can photograph a play kitchen toy reflected through the mirror so as to extract a unique toy number of the play kitchen toy detected from a captured mirror image.

A contactless transponder includes a non-volatile static random access memory including memory points. Each memory point is formed by a volatile memory cell and a non-volatile memory cell. A protocol processing circuit receives data and stores the received data in the volatile memory cells of the memory. A write processing circuit is configured, at the end of the reception and storage of the data, to record, in a single write cycle, the data from the volatile memory cells to the non-volatile memory cells of the respective memory points.