A trolley is disclosed which includes a frame body, a handle and a player, the player and the handle being linked to one another and rotatable with respect to the frame body. Due to the linkage of the player and the handle, the player may rotate as the passengers rotate the handle, which makes the operation convenient and flexible. The player is driven to rotate through the rotation of the handle to adjust an angle of the player, allowing passengers to watch the player conveniently in various situations like standing, sitting, pushing the trolley, etc., which meets different needs of passengers well and also avoids the blocking of the handle to the player.

A system for monitoring shopping carts or other human-propelled carts includes wireless access points that communicate bi-directionally on a wireless network with wheel assemblies of the carts. The system supports both unicast and multicast command transmissions from the access points to the wheel assemblies, including multicast transmissions in which the target wheel assemblies are specified in terms of their states. For example, an access point can transmit a command that is addressed to all wheel assemblies that are locked, or to all wheel assemblies that are moving.

A shopping system may include a mobile shopping aid sized to support thereon or therewithin one or more items to be purchased. A holder may be connected to the mobile shopping aid to travel therewith. The holder may be sized and shaped to hold a mobile computing device. The holder may have a front aperture enabling an owner of the mobile computing device to view a display screen of the mobile computing device while the mobile computing device is being held by the holder. The holder may also have a back aperture enabling a back-facing camera of the mobile computing device to scan one or more barcodes while the mobile computing device is being held by the holder. The system may also include an anti-theft program or module programmed to initiate an alarm protocol in the event that the mobile computing device is untimely removed from the holder.

In some embodiments, systems and methods provide a customer controlled cart workout. Some systems, comprise: a cart coordination control circuit; a shopping cart comprising a cart control system, a wireless transceiver and a resistance modification system configured to adjust a resistance level corresponding to different amounts of force to be applied in physically moving the cart along a surface; wherein the cart coordination control circuit is configured to: associate the shopping cart with a first identified customer; wirelessly communicate with a first user interface unit associated with the first customer; receive, through a cart resistance control software application (APP) operated on the first user interface unit, a resistance control instruction specifying a modification to the resistance level; and communicate a resistance adjustment instruction to the cart control system causing the resistance modification system to adjust the resistance level applied to the shopping cart.

Disclosed is a trolley baseplate including a plate body having a head end and a tail end, a first locking mechanism on the plate body adjacent to the head end and a second locking mechanism on the plate body adjacent to the tail end. The second locking mechanism is placed corresponding to the first locking mechanism and the structures of the two locking mechanism are fitting. When front and back trolleys are concatenated, the tail end of the front trolley and the head end of the back trolley can be locked to each other by means of the first locking mechanism and the second locking mechanism. The trolleys with the above structures can be concatenated more conveniently, and are not liable to overturn upon sudden braking or turning, which can effectively shorten the time for the staff to fasten two trolleys together.

Physical shopping carts can have product detection systems and associate physical shopping carts with mobile computing devices (e.g., smartphones, tablet computing devices, smart watches, wearable computing devices). For example, physical shopping carts can be equipped with one or more product detection systems (e.g., scanners, sensors, cameras) that can electronically tally products that are placed in physical shopping carts. Mobile computing devices can be associated with and mounted on the physical shopping carts to provide a variety of enhanced shopping cart features not possible with conventional physical shopping carts, such as electronically tracking the contents of a shopping cart, checking-out from the mobile computing device (instead of at conventional check-out areas, such as point of sale terminals), and others.

A media enhanced shopping cart system comprises a shopping cart, a locationing component, and a display component for displaying at least one advertisement for a product based on the location of the shopping cart within the store, wherein the locationing component is further operable to determine a location of the product within the store relative to the shopping cart, and wherein the display component is further operable to display an indication of the location of the advertised product relative to the location of the shopping cart.

Asset reconciliation is facilitated by dynamically determining and applying a scan context to asset-describing tag data. Tag data representative of assets are received from RFID tags. A working scan context defining a scope of coverage of assets to be included in an asset reconciliation is dynamically determined based on the received tag data. Additional tag data representative of additional assets are received, and the dynamically determined working scan context is applied to the additional tag data to automatically identifying which assets of the additional assets are to be included in the asset reconciliation. Assets included in the scope of coverage of the working scan context are included in the asset reconciliation, and assets not included in the scope of coverage of the working scan context are not included in the asset reconciliation.

Methods, systems, and machine readable medium are provided for autonomous item identification in an environment including a mobile computational device and a container. One or more sensors are disposed at the container to sense a selected item being placed in the container. In response to sensing the selected item being placed in the container, a location of the container is determined using a positioning system. One or more physical characteristics of the selected item is sensed via the one or more sensors at the container. A set of stored characteristics is retrieved from a database for available items proximate to the location of the container. An identification code for the selected item is identified based on a comparison of the one or more physical characteristics of the selected item with the stored characteristics retrieved from the database of the available items based on the location of the container.

A vehicle tracking system includes a wheel assembly containing sensor circuitry capable of sensing one or more types of conditions, such as wheel rotation, wheel vibration caused by skidding, and specific electromagnetic and/or magnetic signals indicative of particular wheel locations. The wheel assembly may also include a brake mechanism. The wheel assemblies may be mounted on shopping carts and used to collect and monitor shopping cart status and location data via a wireless network. In one embodiment, the wheel assembly communicates via a wired or wireless connection with a handlebar mounted display unit of the cart.