International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE)

ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-8, Issue-1S4, June 2019

Smart Shopping Cart using RFID

Reshmi Anantapalli, R. Rajyashree, Sri Haripriya Nutulapati, Ria Singh 

Abstract--- In the present day, the most preferred approach to that it follows the customer who has the RFID tag that
any task is one that provides maximum comfort and convenience matches the frequency of the tag attached in the card. The
and consumes the least time. A shopping cart is generally trolley is allotted to per customer for a limited period of time
provided to the customers in a supermarket in order to assist their
and has a timer.
customers with the transportation of the merchandise. The paper
proposes a system for a human-following cart (smart cart) that The customer can focus on shopping meanwhile the cart
uses Radio Frequency Identification tags to identify and follow follows the customers everywhere he/she goes. When the
the customers. Each customer entering the shop is given a Radio time is about to get over the sensor attached to the cart alerts
Frequency Identification card and its respective sensor is the customer about the time that is left to return the cart, with
installed on a shopping cart. As the customer moves inside the making a beep sound. This makes the customers aware of the
mart, the smart shopping cart follows him/her while maintaining
time that is left for them to wind up the shopping. Alerting
a safe distance from its respective customer and also the racks
and other customers in the mart. Customers can enter their the customers through alarms helps in preventing the
budget before they begin shopping so they get notified if the total shortage of carts for other customers. This would decrease
bill exceeds their budget. Optical Character Recognition/ the chaos that would be created during rush hours. In
Intelligent Character Recognition software is used to scan addition to this, a screen is attached to the cart where the
customer's shopping list. Global Positioning System installed in items to be purchased by the customer is loaded. As the
the tablet helps customer in finding the products in the mart. The
customers continue the shopping, the items which are
system includes automatic billing of the products which have
Radio Frequency Identification tags on them and the exit gate purchased are stroked out of the list. After all the items are
that has Radio Frequency Identification sensor will scan each purchased, the final bill is generated by calculating the price
product in the cart and the total cost of products purchased is of the purchased items. This system would help the
given. Payment method is chosen by customer and payment is customers to prevent the time wasted by standing in long
done. Calories of food products are also displayed on the screen queues on billings counters.
of smart phone or tablet used to curb the customers from
The proposed system aims to reduce the efforts of the
purchasing excessive junk food. The key is to design the cart in
such a way that it reduces man power and daily hassle of long customers in a complex and thus saving them a lot of time.
queues. The paper promises a more cost efficient system for the Furthermore the RFID technology makes the system cost
smart shopping cart than any of its predecessors. efficient and accurate. The customer would have a relaxed
Keywords--- Shopping Cart, Radio Frequency Identification, shopping experience after using the proposed smart-cart.
Radio Frequency Identification tag, Radio Frequency
Identification Sensor, Passive Tags, Radio Frequency II. RELATED WORK
Identification Antenna, Reader, Micro-chip.
One of the existing systems deals with Smart Shopping
I. INTRODUCTION cart using wireless sensor networks [1]. This design ensures
detection of cases of deception invoked by dishonest
The main objective of the project is to design a smart
customers who intend to rob the mart. The drawback of the
shopping cart which follows the customer from a safe
barcode reader used in the system is that it is a line of sight
distance, in a shopping store or complex. The customer-
operation therefore product being scanned should be
following cart is achieved by the Radio Frequency
positioned precisely.
Identification (RFID) Technology. The electromagnetic filed
The system also deals with an automatic billing trolley [2],
produced by RFID is automatically used to identify and
in which the system makes the billing easier by using a RFID
track tags attached to objects. The tags contain electronically-
tag and microcontrollers.
stored information. The tags present are passive and collect
The system aims to reduce manpower and make the billing
energy from a nearby RFID reader's interrogating radio
system very efficient. The main disadvantage of the system is
waves.
that it uses some hardware that is very costly thus preventing
The system proposed, is a system which reduces the
the system to be cost efficient. Also, the number of shopping
human effort of dragging the trolley throughout the store and
carts needed cannot be determined exactly at a certain time
provide stress free shopping. The smart-cart is so designed
and may cause shortage of shopping cats in the rush hour.
Manuscript received June 10, 2019.
The Internet of Things (IoT) based smart carts with
Reshmi Anantapalli, Department of Computer Science and automated billing and customer relationship management [3]
Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, T.N, deal with reducing expenses of the management by reducing
India (e-mail: [Link]@[Link])
R. Rajyashree, Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
manpower at the billing counters and helps in keeping the
SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, T.N, India (e-mail: customers aware of their budget.
rajyashree123@[Link])
Sri Haripriya Nutulapati, Department of Computer Science and
Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, T.N,
India.(e-mail: sri13haripriya@[Link])
Ria Singh, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM
Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, T.N, India. (e-mail:
[Link].4995@[Link])

Published By:
Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering
Retrieval Number: A10680681S419/19©BEIESP 379 & Sciences Publication
 Smart Shopping Cart Using RFID

The limitation of this system is that the data read by the externally). According to the various functions of the RFID
sensor is sent to the main server but if the server fails then systems, they have been distributed into two classes: the tag
the sensor data will not be stored anywhere. Another antenna and the reader antenna.
limitation is that there is no provision of self- billing in this
C. Microchip
system.
The RFID based smart cart with billing using Raspberry pi The microchip also called as a chip is a semiconductor
3 and IoT based Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation computer module (called as an integrated circuit) is
[4] is used inside the supermarket to find the products. It will manufactured using materials such as silicon at a very less
read the price and weight of every product and the GPS scale. Microchips are computer hardware systems which are
navigation saves the customer's time of searching for made for logic programming and also for the computer
products in the supermarket. The main drawback of this memory (also known as RAM chips). These chips have been
concept is that only the regular customers can make use of include by both memory and logic for special objectives like
this facility in the supermarket. the bit slicing, gateways, analog-digital and conversion used.
The Cloud and RFID based smart cart with billing and D. RFID Reader
anti-theft RFID gates [5] provides a significant decrease in
The RFID Reader (Radio Frequency Identification
queuing time of the customers. Billing is automatically
Reader) is a device used to collect information by an RFID
executed using their RFID tags. Anti- theft RFID gates
tag. RFID is utilized in tracking individual objects. Radio
prevent any kind of thefts. The main disadvantage of this
waves are used in sending data from the tag to a reader.
smart system is that only the customers who come to the
When the right RFID software is incorporated, a
supermarket regularly can make their payments using their
identification of objects are done using the reader which
RFID tags. Also, if the product list is not erased from the
provides a quicker, more accurate, a reduced overall cost.
customer's database due to any error then the anti- theft gate
might give false alarm.
IV. ALGORITHM
III. COMPONENTS OF SYSTEM Step 1: Start
Step 2: Initialize system
A. RFID Sensor Step 3: Allot RFID tag to customer and cart
Electromagnetic fields are used by Radio-frequency Step 4: Add the item attached with RFID tag into smart cart
Identification (RFID) to automatically identify and track tags Step 5: RFID reader interprets the information of tag
that are attached to objects. Electronically-stored information Step 6: Reader send the data to the micro-controller
is contained in the tags. Energy from a nearby RFID reader's Step 7: Micro-controller evaluates the program
interrogating radio waves is collected by passive tags. Active Step 8: Total cost is displayed on a Liquid Crystal Display
tags contain an internal power source (which could be a (LCD)
battery) also the RFID based sensor [6] will work despite Step 9: Micro-controller sends the total amount in the billing
being hundreds of meters away from the source. In case of a system
barcode, the tag needs to be placed within the line of sight of Step 10: Billing Server prints the bill
the reader while the same is not required in case of RFID, Step 11: Stop
thus it may be embedded in the tracked object.
V. PROPOSED SYSTEM & Results
B. RFID Antenna
The smart shopping cart is conceptualized keeping in mind
The model of the RFID antenna has parameters which are the interest, comfort and satisfaction of the customers. The
radiation resistance, efficiency, Q and bandwidth must be smart shopping cart mainly helps in reducing the burden on
considered in ordered to meet the necessities and helps it the customers while shopping in a supermarket. The system
achieve the needed level of performance. The antennas are engages as soon as customers enter the super market. Firstly,
only tuned up to resonate a very narrow field of frequencies they have to register with the system and immediately a
being carried out which in turn are centered on the RFID Radio Frequency Identification card is allotted to them.
antenna system. Similarly, a mirroring RFID sensor is attached to a shopping
The antennas of the RFID will propagate in a wave like cart which will follow the customer throughout the shopping
shape which may be vertical or may have horizontal period. Once the cart is handed over to shopper, the message
dimensions. The coverage area of the RFID signals are "Wish you a happy shopping experience" is displayed along
partially supervised so that the wave enlarges as it leaves the with the customer's name on the Liquid Crystal Display
antenna. The number of degrees describes the pattern of the (LCD) screen, such as a tablet, attached to the smart cart. If
signals getting covered while it also depicts the lowered the customer is a regular shopper at the supermarket, their
strength of the antennas. The Passive Tags makes use of the previous balance and their last purchase history are displayed
induced coils energy for its operation. on the LCD screen. Depending on their purchase history
This induced Alternating Current (AC) voltage is rectified products are suggested to the customer. This RFID based
to provide a voltage source for the device. As the Direct smart cloud cart system [7] is used by the customers.
Current (DC) voltage reaches a certain level, the device starts
operating. RF signals are used to provide a source of energy
to a reader that could interact with a remotely placed device
and had no power source such as a battery(being provided

Published By:
Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering
Retrieval Number: A10680681S419/19©BEIESP 380 & Sciences Publication
 International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE)
ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-8, Issue-1S4, June 2019

If a new customer or a regular customer has his or her own software fails at reading the products of the list accurately,
shopping list then the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) then the customer can manually select products in the tablet.
or ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) software installed
in the tablet will scan the 'to- buy' list of the customer. If the

Fig. 1: Architecture of Smart cart using RFID

Most supermarkets being huge in size, searching for along with the total cost of items purchased. If any item is to
products is a laborious task and at times some customers are be removed from the cart or number of items is modified
lost in space. Hence, a smart cart with Global Positioning then total cost of the products will also be modified
System (GPS) [8] based concept is planned to be installed in accordingly and the shopping process will continue until
the tablet which will lead them to the product if it is customers are done with buying goods.
available else the message "Sorry, product is currently Each product in the supermarket will have RFID tags on
unavailable" will be displayed on the screen. This helps in it. This will help in scanning the products at the exit gate
saving some precious time of the shoppers. Fig. 1 illustrates which has RFID sensors. Billing of products is also done at
the architecture of the entire smart shopping cart and smart the exit gate. As a customer passes through the gate with his/
shopping process. her products in the cart, all the products are scanned and the
The shoppers can also enter their budget as soon as they total amount is displayed in the tablet. The customer can
are allotted their smart carts so they can be intimidated when now pay the bill using his/ her choice of payment method or
the total cost of products in their cart exceeds their budget. the IoT (Internet of Things) based smart billing system [10]
Thus, the smart cart will not only help the shoppers by will in fact make the customer need not resort to any manual
organizing their shopping list but will also prevent them or card payment after shopping because, the same would be
from spending excessively. debited from the bank account to which the RFID tag is
The smart list system has been proposed along with the linked. After payment the customer can sign off from his/
smart shopping cart where once the item is picked by the her account.
customer it gets scanned by the RFID scanner and all the Thus, this new technology cart system [11] completely
details of the product will be displayed on the LCD screen enhances the practice of queuing for billing as well as
[9]. Additionally, the smart cart would also display the payments thus saving valuable and scarce time of customers
calorie count for each item (if the item is an edible one) for effective and better utilization in more important
being placed in the cart, as nowadays people have become activities and human bonding.
more conscious of their health and look for healthier options
to consume. This would help the customers to keep a check
on their shopping items and deter indiscriminate purchase of
junk and unhealthy food. The final quantity and cost of the
item is displayed as soon as an item gets added to the basket

Published By:
Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering
Retrieval Number: A10680681S419/19©BEIESP 381 & Sciences Publication
 Smart Shopping Cart Using RFID

10. Komal Machhirke, Priyanka Goche, Rupali Rathod, Rinku

VI. CONCLUSION Petkar, Manohar Golait, "A New Technology of Smart
Shopping Cart using RFID and ZIGBEE".
In today’s life of hustle and bustle, customers are
balancing various chores simultaneously and running against
time endlessly. Due to the problems of choices, every
individual would love to spend long hours on shopping,
which is hard pressed. But, compromisation can’t be
achieved on higher standards of living which are increasing
day to day and need to be readily available also easily
affordable. In fact, every human expects a stylish experience
while shopping and shops for the ease of living, hence
wishes to relax while shopping without the hassle of
searching for the products, carrying them and pushing the
cart. Thus, the proposed smart shopping cart system aims at
making the daily shopping experience of a customer an
enjoyable and convenient one by providing a completely
intelligent and personalized assistant that can assist the
shoppers throughout their shopping period.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The work of the authors is supported by The SRM
Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India. We
express our sincere gratitude to our guide Ms. R.
Rajyashree for her valuable feedback and guidance
throughout the period of research, which has led the paper
towards successful completion.

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Published By:
Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering
Retrieval Number: A10680681S419/19©BEIESP 382 & Sciences Publication