| Description |
The goal of this project is to create a shopping cart capable of autonomously guiding elderly shoppers to the items they wish to purchase at grocery stores.
This shopping cart will have a user interface to allow shoppers to input the items they wish to purchase and will then utilize mapping algorithms to find the optimal path to the items in question. In order to properly use the mapping algorithm, an indoor positioning system (IPS) will be implemented to locate the cart inside the store in real-time similarly to GPS positioning system. After discerning the most optimal path, the shopping cart should automatically drive itself to the items one-by-one allowing the customer to take the items off the shelves and place it within the cart. The shopping cart should keep track of the items placed within the cart in order to facilitate the checkout experience after the customer is done shopping. In addition to this, while driving itself to each item, the automated shopping cart will use obstacle avoidance to prevent itself from crashing into unexpected obstacles or other customers. When all the items on the shopping list have been added to the cart, the cart should then drive itself to the checkout of the store before returning to its charging station.
In the scope of this project, we will not be considering how to develop a charging station for the shopping cart or the mechanism for the cart to pick the desired items off the shelves, but will instead be focusing specifically on the shopping carts ability to drive autonomously, and optimally to its destination without colliding with obstacles.
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