Abstract:
A name badge which has wireless capabilities. The name badge is normally maintained in a power reduced states, but detects an excitation signal from a remote antenna and turns on to provide ID information. The ID information can be associated with the transaction from the remote computer, and used to determine who initiated that transaction.

Description:
[0001]    This application claims priority from application Ser. No. 61/023,323, filed Jan. 24, 2008, the entire contents of the disclosure of which is herewith incorporated by reference. 
     
    
     BACKGROUND 
       [0002]    Inventory shrinkage, a combination of employee theft, shoplifting, vendor fraud and administrative error, cost United States retailers over $41.6 billion in 2006 according to the latest National Retail Security Survey report on retail theft, which analyzed theft incidents from 118 of the largest U.S. retail chains representing 24 million employees at 1.6 million locations. 
         [0003]    According to University of Florida criminologist Richard C. Hollinger, Ph.D., who directs the National Retail Security Survey, retailers lost 1.7 percent of their total annual sales to inventory shrinkage in 2006. The surveyed portion of the retail economy transacts over $4.7 trillion dollars annually, making the loss worth over $41.6 billion. 
         [0004]    While total inventory shrinkage was down slightly in 2006, to 1.68 percent from 1.75 percent two years ago, both employee theft and shoplifting are on the rise. Inventory shrinkage remains the single largest category of larceny in the United States, more than motor vehicle theft, bank robbery and household burglary combined. 
         [0005]    Hollinger warns that it isn&#39;t just retailers who should be concerned about retail theft. Retail theft impacts everyone. Ultimately it&#39;s consumers that are hurt the most in the form of higher prices. 
         [0006]    “An average family of four will spend more than $540 next year in higher prices because of inventory theft,” Hollinger said. “Thieves also generally target hot selling items, which means those must-have toys on your child&#39;s holiday wish list are less likely to be available on the store shelves.” 
         [0000]    
       
         
               
               
               
               
             
           
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                 Source of Inventory Shrinkage 
                 % of Loss* 
                 $ Lost 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
             
               
                   
                 Employee Theft 
                 47% 
                 $19.5 billion  
               
               
                   
                 Shoplifting 
                 32% 
                 $9.7 billion 
               
               
                   
                 Administrative Error 
                 14% 
                 $5.8 billion 
               
               
                   
                 Vendor Fraud 
                  4% 
                 $1.7 billion 
               
               
                   
                 Total Inventory Shrinkage 
                   
                 $41.6 billion  
               
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                 *total not equal to 100% due to rounding 
               
               
                   
                 Source: National Retail Survey, 2007 (2006 retail sales shrinkage) 
               
             
          
         
       
     
         [0007]    The study, conducted by the University of Florida with a funding grant from ADT Security Services, Inc., a unit of Tyco Fire and Security Services, discovered that retail security managers attributed more than 47% percent of their losses to employee theft, up from 46 percent the prior year. Internal theft by employees cost retailers a record $19.5 billion. 
       SUMMARY 
       [0008]    A system is described that enables employers to identify employees wirelessly from battery powered name badges. The personnel are detected and identified as they come into close proximity to the base station or host located underneath or near the business&#39;s cash register. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       In the Drawings: 
         [0009]      FIG. 1  shows a block diagram of the system; 
           [0010]      FIG. 2  shows an excitation antenna and its associated circuitry; 
           [0011]      FIG. 3  shows a block diagram of the associated circuitry; 
           [0012]      FIG. 4  shows a block diagram of the end to end system; 
           [0013]      FIG. 5  shows an embodiment of using this system to find persons in an emergency; and 
           [0014]      FIG. 6  shows a system flowchart. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       [0015]    Employee theft of all types costs merchants and consumers alike, in terms of added cost to the goods sold or purchased. 
         [0016]    An embodiment describes monitoring an employee who gets close to certain machinery. 
         [0017]    In an embodiment, an employee approaches the cash register wearing a badge of the type disclosed in an embodiment. The badge transmits signals, such that when the employee gets to within two feet (or some other short distance representing a proximity) of the cash register, the employee&#39;s badge sends out a signal via a miniature transmitter located within the badge. The signal is received by a small receiver attached to a printed circuit board located in a resting pad beneath or near to the cash register. 
         [0018]    When the employee is in that proximity, each transaction as rung up is time and date stamped, and forwarded to a server computer in a central office, e.g., the manager&#39;s office, via a wireless connection, such as Wifi or ZigBee. The received information is stored in the server computer&#39;s database. This information represents an amount of the transaction (e.g., how much cash was rung up) and the person doing the transaction. 
         [0019]    The present inventor recognizes that this is an unexpectedly simple solution to the employee theft problem. The present system can track employees, and also can track both cash and inventory in a same way. Everything can be tracked from the time it arrives at the store, until it leaves the store, either sold or otherwise accounted for. The present inventors realized that at least one source of the employee theft problem is that there is no adequate way of accounting for who does certain selling functions in a store. By monitoring wirelessly persons&#39; positions at times of transactions, this problem is addressed. 
         [0020]    This allows determining positions of persons at times, and also determining times of transactions. By monitoring both, this allows determining ‘who’ rang up certain transactions, and and whether or not the proper amount of cash was collected. 
         [0021]    In the case of larger department stores, modern cash registers require the employee to enter a password, or other employee identification codes, before the cash register will operate. Many millions more smaller establishments simply cannot afford the cost for such a modern price cash register. The embodiment is much more low cost and allows monitoring similar issues at a much lower cost and without expensive cash register hardware. 
         [0022]    In an embodiment, the name badge has a battery (alkaline or rechargeable), a memory chip, a microprocessor chip, a proximity activation coil, a low power RF transmitter, an LED., a power supply and an antenna. The badge communicates with an electronics board, e.g. a PC board as part of a computer, located either under the cash register, housed within a rubber resting pad, or nearby the cash register. 
         [0023]    When the employee approaches the cash register to ring up a customer purchase, the antenna coil at the cash register acts as an exciter and causes the exciter coil located within the employee&#39;s name badge to become excited. This wakes up the microprocessor within the badge from an idle or sleep state in which the battery consumption is minimized. The wake up causes the MPU to send a signal via the miniature transmitter located within the employee badge. The transmitted data is received at the PC board and transmitted to the remote server within the facility via wireless protocol, e.g., BlueTooth or Zig-Bee. The signal indicating who is close to the cash register, and hence is presumably operating the cash register is also time coded using the PC board internal time clock (RTC). All of this is sent to the remote server via wireless link as well. At approximately the same time, the wireless cash register sends a message to the remote server, either wirelessly or via Ethernet cable, to indicate how much cash was entered on the cash register. 
         [0024]    Only the person within proximity of the cash register will have his or her name badge activated at that time. Since the badge in placed in a sleep mode while the employee is out of range of the cash register, the battery located within the employee&#39;s badge has a longer sustained power cycle. This enabling the badge to operate for many hours or days, without recharging or replacing the badge&#39;s internal battery. This can be important to minimize the number of times the battery will need charging. 
         [0025]    The figures show further details of certain embodiments. 
         [0026]      FIG. 1  depicts the employee&#39;s name badge with internal components. The badge has a plastic housing, a battery, a power supply, an excitation coil, a microprocessor unit, a memory storage device for storing the employee&#39; s unique identification, a low powered transmitter, coupled to an antenna. 
         [0027]    The badge  100  includes a number of fields thereon both written and electronically accessible. These fields may include company name  102 , the employee name  104 , and employee title  106 . In addition, the name badge may include an internal battery  108 , and an indicator  110  such as an LED. The internals of the system are shown, including a 900 MHz antenna  112 , preferably located on a flat surface of the badge, preferably extending around, for example, a perimeter of at least a portion of the badge. The antenna is driven by the electronics that are located within the badge. These electronics are preferably flatpack housed devices. 
         [0028]    The battery  108 , for example, may drive a power supply  120  which may be a DC to DC converter, or may simply be a power junction area that connects to multiple different units. The power supply  120  drives a processor  130 , and memory chip  132 . It also drives a transmitter  134  which is substantially matched to the antenna  112 . In operation, the processor and memory operate as described further herein. An excitation coil  140  is provided, and has an output  142  which is sampled by the processor. 
         [0029]    In operation, the processor  130  causes all of the electronics to operate in a sleep mode except during a time when and immediately after, the excitation coil  140  is sensing an excitation. When in sleep mode, all of the electronic devices are turned off, including the LED  110 . This may use conventional sleep mode electronics to determine operation. 
         [0030]    Therefore, an employee wearing the name badge normally has this LED in the off position. However, when the employee comes within range of an exciter and appropriately turned on, the LED is correspondingly turned on. 
         [0031]      FIG. 2  depicts the internal components of the “Resting Pad” as described more fully herein above. The PC board is comprised of a two foot diameter or similar, excitation antenna, two LEDs, indicating if the system detects the presence of the employee badge, and the rubber enclosure which contains and protects the PC board and other components of the resting pad portion of the system. The exciter shown in  FIG. 2  has  200  represents the rubber resting pad, which may be associated with for example, a cash register or other device that accepts transactions. A large size excitation antenna  210  is provided. This excitation antenna for example, can be 2 feet in diameter, to produce sufficient amount of signal to be received by the much smaller excitation coil  140 . This produces, for example, a magnetic signal that is received by that remote receiver, and which signals the microprocessor to turn on. 
         [0032]    The rubber resting pad is itself connected to a source of AC power shown generally as  215 . A PC board  220  carries out certain circuit operations as described herein. 
         [0033]    Moreover, the excitation antenna may include two different LEDs, and inactive LED  225  which indicates that the system is inactive, and an active LED  230  which indicates that a system is active. 
         [0034]      FIG. 3  depicts the PC board located beneath or near to the cash register that the employee uses to ring up transactions. The PC board has a miniature transceiver, an antenna, a wireless transceiver (such as Blue-Tooth or Zig-Bee), a power supply, a microprocessor (MPU), a Real Time Clock (RTC), a memory storage device, an active/inactive signaling circuit, and a rubber enclosure resting pad for the cash register. Outputs  301  of the PC board  220  goes to the antenna excitation coil, while an output  302  can connect to the LEDs. The system includes a power supply  310  which drives all of the different modules including the microprocessor  320 , a real time clock  325 , memory  330 , transmitter receiver  335 , and a network device  340  which may be a ZigBee network. The active/inactive signal module  345  may be a dedicated device that determines whether a name badge is within range, or may be implemented as part of the microprocessor  320 . 
         [0035]    The excitation coil can be a tubular coil or can be a flat coil, limited only by the packaging of the ID device. In some embodiments, it may be extremely advantageous to use flat components. 
         [0036]      FIG. 4  depicts the entire end to end system, including the employee ID badge, the electronic cash register, the resting pad, the low power transceiver communicating with the employee ID badge, the Zig-Bee or BlueTooth transceiver unit, and the system remote server computer.  FIG. 4  illustrates how the ID badge  100  can produce a wireless signal shown as  400 , directed to the “resting pad”  200 , that associates a person&#39;s proximity with real-time information. The circuitry in the resting pad  200  is sends information by the wireless communication, e.g. Zig Bee, to the receiver  410 . This is connected to the system server  420 , and records information about the transactions and for the person&#39;s proximity and the real time information. The system server may also associate this with other similar information. 
         [0037]      FIG. 5  depicts the rescue and track embodiment of the employee ID (name) badge. The system contains a detector, using a metal detector type device, housing the P/C board as described in  FIG. 3  above, wherein the P/C board has been made in such a manner that it becomes mobile and battery powered, in order to locate a victim of a plane crash, earthquake or other disaster that might be buried under some type of debris. 
         [0038]    For example, in one embodiment, the ID badge is a wallet sized device, kept with the person at all times. When attempting to locate people, a large antenna  500  is used to excite the corresponding antenna in the lost person. This forms a metal detector type device  510 . The outputs from the receiver are sent to a signal strength meter  520  which can be used, for example, to detect the location or proximity of persons who are difficult to find, such as earthquake victims or crash victims. The signals can be handled and processed in a PC board  525  which may operate in a similar way to that discussed above with respect to  FIG. 3   
         [0039]      FIG. 6  illustrates an end to end flowchart. The system starts out in sleep mode  600 . At  605 , a person wearing the badge approaches the large antenna.  610  determines if the badge is within range, and if so, at  615 , the excitation coil  140  within the badge is energized. 
         [0040]    At  620  this causes the badge to send its identification to the receiver  335  within the host. The host&#39;s electronic processor at  625  receives and stores the ID, and at  630  sends that ID along with data from the real time clock  325  to the host server platform. At  635 , that server platform timestamps the data and stores it into a master database file.  640  logs the cash register entry using the real-time clock and associates it with the information from the badge. 
         [0041]    Although only a few embodiments have been disclosed in detail above, other embodiments are possible and the inventors intend these to be encompassed within this specification. The specification describes specific examples to accomplish a more general goal that may be accomplished in another way. This disclosure is intended to be exemplary, and the claims are intended to cover any modification or alternative which might be predictable to a person having ordinary skill in the art. For example, other components can be used. While the above describes a location system for anti theft, The same wireless battery powered name badge can be used to locate victims of a disaster, such as an earthquake or plane crash utilizing a device resembling a metal detector. When the receiving device comes into close proximity to the victim, it reads the ID badge and determines who is buried under the rubble and where they are buried. Another embodiment, can hence be used to save lives in a disaster. Also, other similar structure can be used to determine location. 
         [0042]    While the above has described very specific forms of structure and networks that can be used, other network protocols, including but not limited to Bluetooth and others can be similarly and analogously used. In addition, other applications for this system are possible and are contemplated by the present application. 
         [0043]    Also, the inventors intend that only those claims which use the words “means for” are intended to be interpreted under 35 USC 112, sixth paragraph. Moreover, no limitations from the specification are intended to be read into any claims, unless those limitations are expressly included in the claims.