Patent Publication Number: US-2018053239-A1

Title: Shopping Mall Guiding System Based On Internet Of Things And Method Thereof

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION 
     This application claims the benefit of Chinese Patent Application No. 201610701400.4, filed Aug. 22, 2016. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     1. Field of the Invention 
     The present disclosure relates to a shopping mall guiding technology, and more particularly to a shopping mall guiding system which is able to check presence of a target product based on Internet-of-Things and then generate a shopping route, and a method thereof. 
     2. Description of the Related Art 
     In recent years, while Internet of Things (IoT) is developed and popularized rapidly, various applications based on IoT are widely implemented in many fields, and the application in a shopping mall to instantly sense displayed products attracts the most attention. 
     In general, because of having a larger area and displaying a large quantity of products, a conventional shopping mall usually uses an inventory system for management; however, the management using the inventory system is unable to response that the displayed product is not on a shelf and also not sold yet, for example, a client takes a product from the shelf and places the product in a shopping cart, but does not check out yet; in this case, the product is misjudged to be on the shelf, and the misjudgment may impact clerk&#39;s replenishment efficiency, and what is more serious is that, for other client, there is no product to buy. As a result, the conventional management using the inventory system may cause a problem of poor shopping convenience. 
     For this reason, a manufacturer develops technology to instantly monitor import and export of displayed products based on IoT. This technology may be helpful to improve the replenishment efficiency to prevent the client from the situation that there is no product to buy, but the shopping mall usually has a large area and displays a great quantity of products, client may not find desired products quickly even there are product signs. Hence, aforementioned technology is still unable to solve the problem of poor shopping convenience. 
     As a result, what is need is to develop a shopping guiding system to solve the problem of poor shopping convenience. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     In order to solve above-mentioned problem, the present disclosure is to provide a shopping mall guiding system based on IoT. The system includes a database, at least one electronic billboard, at least one shelf, a mobile device, and a server. The database is configured to store at least one client message which each includes client data and at least one purchase history. The at least one electronic billboard is configured to continuously receive information of at least one predetermined promotional product and an advertisement link for display on a display device. Each of the at least one shelf is positioned through IoT and configured to transmit and instantly update a current product displaying message thereof through IoT. The mobile device is configured to log into a shopping interface according to client data to create an order list, and receive a shopping route, a map and a product position message for display. The server is configured to continuously transmit the information of the at least one predetermined promotional product and the advertisement link to the at least one electronic billboard, and receive the current product displaying message of the at least one shelf to provide the corresponding shopping interface, and sieve out the at least one shelf according to the order list created by the mobile device and the current product displaying message of the at least one shelf, so as to generate and transmit the shopping route, the map and the product position message to the mobile device, and use the order list created by the mobile device as the purchase history corresponding to the client message and store the order list in the database. 
     In order to solve above-mentioned problem, the present disclosure is further to provide a shopping mall guiding method based on IoT. The method is applied to network environment including a database, at least one electronic billboard, at least one shelf, a mobile device and a server, and the method includes following steps: in the database, storing at least one client message which each includes client data and at least one purchase history; continuously transmitting information of at least one predetermined promotional product and an advertisement link from the server to the electronic billboard, and continuously displaying the information of the at least one predetermined promotional product and the advertisement link by a display device of the electronic billboard; positioning the at least one shelf through IoT, and transmitting and instantly updating a current product displaying message of the at least one shelf through IoT; in the server, receiving the current product displaying message of the at least one shelf and providing a shopping interface corresponding to the current product displaying message; in the mobile device, logging into the shopping interface according to the client data, and creating an order list corresponding to the client data; and in the server, sieving out the at least one shelf according to the order list created by the mobile device and the current product displaying message of the at least one shelf, to generate a shopping route, a map, and a product position message, and transmitting the shopping route, the map, and the product position message to the mobile device for display, and storing the order list created by the mobile device in the database as the purchase history. 
     According to above description, the difference between the present disclosure and the conventional technology is that, in the system and method of the present disclosure, the shelves are positioned through IoT and the product displaying messages of the shelves are transmitted through IoT, and the server provides the shopping interface according to the product displaying messages, and after the mobile device logs into the shopping interface and creates the order list, the server sieves out the shelf according to the order list and the product displaying messages to generate the shopping route, the map and the product position message for guiding user to shop. 
     By using above technical means, the technical effect of improving shopping convenience may be achieved. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       The structure, operating principle and effects of the present disclosure will be described in detail by way of various embodiments which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. 
         FIG. 1  is a block diagram of a shopping mall guiding system based on Internet-of-Things (IoT), in accordance with the present disclosure. 
         FIG. 2  is a flowchart showing the steps in an operation of a shopping mall guiding method based on IoT, in accordance with the present disclosure. 
         FIG. 3  is a schematic view of a shelf and an instantly-updated current product displaying message of the present disclosure. 
         FIG. 4  is a schematic view of a shopping route, a map and a product position message of the present disclosure. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     The following embodiments of the present invention are herein described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. These drawings show specific examples of the embodiments of the present invention. It is to be understood that these embodiments are exemplary implementations and are not to be construed as limiting the scope of the present invention in any way. Further modifications to the disclosed embodiments, as well as other embodiments, are also included within the scope of the appended claims. These embodiments are provided so that this disclosure is thorough and complete, and fully conveys the inventive concept to those skilled in the art. Regarding the drawings, the relative proportions and ratios of elements in the drawings may be exaggerated or diminished in size for the sake of clarity and convenience. Such arbitrary proportions are only illustrative and not limiting in any way. The same reference numbers are used in the drawings and description to refer to the same or like parts. 
     It is to be understood that, although the terms ‘first’, ‘second’, ‘third’, and so on, may be used herein to describe various elements, these elements should not be limited by these terms. These terms are used only for the purpose of distinguishing one component from another component. Thus, a first element discussed herein could be termed a second element without altering the description of the present invention. As used herein, the term “or” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items. 
     Before illustration for the shopping mall guiding system based on IoT and the method thereof of the present disclosure, environment where the system and method of the present disclosure are applied is described first. A shelf of the present disclosure has an IoT function to obtain a position of the shelf, transmit a product displaying message and instantly update the product displaying message. In actual implementation, a database, an electronic billboard, the shelf, a mobile device and a server are in communication with each other through network, and the database may be installed in the server. 
     The following describes a shopping mall guiding system based on IoT and the method thereof of the present disclosure, with reference to the accompanying drawings. Please refer to  FIG. 1 , which is a block diagram of the shopping mall guiding system of the present disclosure. The shopping mall guiding system includes a database  110 , an electronic billboard  120 , a shelf  130 , a mobile device  140  and a server  150 . The database  110  is configured to store client messages, and each client message includes client data and purchase history. In actual implementation, the database  110  may be linked with the server  150  through network  160 , or may be disposed in the server  150 , so that the database  110  may receive and store the purchase history generated by the server  150 . The database  110  may be a relational database or a NoSQL, and use a hard disk, a recordable optical disk, a flash memory or a RAM memory as a storage carrier. Furthermore, each client message may include purchase preference. The server  150  may analyze the purchase history corresponding to the same client message by time period, such as a week, a month, a quarter, a year and so on, to generate the purchase preference corresponding to the client message and store the generated purchase preference in the database  110 . For example, if the purchase history corresponding to the same client message records a pack of cigarettes every day, the server  150  may determine the cigarette to be the purchase preference which is then stored in the database  110 . 
     The electronic billboard  120  is configured to continuously receive information of promotional products and an advertisement link and then continuously display the information of promotional products and the advertisement link on a display device. Preferably, the display device may be a LCD displayer, a plasma displayer and so on. The manner of displaying various promotional products may be implemented by displaying the promotional products in a loop with various display effect, such as fade-in-and-fade-out effect, flip-book effect, rolling effect, slideshow effect and so on. The advertisement link is a hyperlink which may be displayed in the form of text or QR Code, and the user holding the mobile device  140  may click or scan the hyperlink to open a web page corresponding thereto to browse the promotional product, advertisement or electronic publication published by the shopping mall. In actual implementation, the electronic billboard  120  may receive the information of the promotional products and the advertisement link through the network  160 , and display the information of the promotional products and the advertisement link on the display device. 
     The shelf  130  is positioned through IoT (that is, a position of the shelf may be obtained through IoT), and each shelf  130  may instantly update a current product displaying message which is transmitted through IoT. In actual implementation, IoT may include RFID technology, and each product displayed on the shelf  130  has a RFID tag corresponding thereto, so that the shelf  130  may instantly check presence of each product and the number of the product to generate the current product displaying message. The current product displaying message may include information of the displayed product, such as a product name and an expiration date. After the shelf  130  updates the product displaying message, the updated product displaying message is transmitted to the server  150  for further process which will be described in detail later. 
     The mobile device  140  is configured to log into the shopping interface according to the client data (such as an account and a password), to create the order list corresponding to the client data, and may be used to receive and display a shopping route, a map and a product position message received from the server  150 . In actual implementation, the user may operate the mobile device  140  to select at least one product of a product list provided by the shopping interface, to generate the order list. Preferably, the order list may include the number and a name of the product which the user wants to order. Furthermore, the mobile device  140  may overlap the shopping route, the map and the product position message as vector layers, and display overlapped vector layers on a screen thereof. Preferably, the map is the most bottom layer to avoid covering the shopping route and the product position message. 
     The server  150  is configured to continuously transmit the information of the promotional products and the advertisement link to the electronic billboard  120 , and the electronic billboard  120  may continuously display the information of the promotional product and the advertisement link. In actual implementation, the server  150  may sieve out the promotional product from all displayed products, and a difference between an expiration date of the promotional product and the current date is within an allowable range, such as one day, two days, three day and so on, or the same day. In other words, from all displayed products, the server  150  may find expiring products as the promotional products. Furthermore, the server  150  may receive the current product displaying message of each shelf  130  to provide the shopping interface for the logged-in mobile device  140  to perform shopping operation, as a result, sold-out product is not displayed on the shopping interface. After the mobile device  140  creates the order list, the server  150  searches at least one shelf  130  having the ordered product according to the order list and the current product displaying messages of the shelves  130 , and then generates the shopping route, the map and the product position message according to positions of the targeted shelf  130 , and transmits the shopping route, the map and the product position message to the mobile device  140  for display. For example, suppose that there are two shelves  130 , and the current product displaying message of the first shelf is “shelf one; product A; quantity: 5”, and the current product displaying message of the second shelf is “shelf two; product B; quantity: 3”. If the order list created by the mobile device  140  is “product A, quantity 1; product B, quantity 1”, the server  150  generates the shopping route according to the order list and product displaying messages of all shelves  130 . The order list of the mobile device  140  includes the product A and the product B which are separately displayed on the first shelf and the second shelf, so the server  150  may detect current positions of the mobile device  140 , the first shelf and the second shelf to calculate the shopping route, for example, the server  150  calculates the shortest route reaching the first shelf and the second shelf as the shopping route. 
     The following refers to  FIG. 2 , which is a flowchart showing the steps in an operation of the shopping mall guiding method based on IoT, in accordance with the present disclosure. The shopping mall guiding method is applied to network environment including the database  110 , the electronic billboard  120 , the shelf  130 , the mobile device  140  and the server  150 . The shopping mall guiding method includes following steps. In a step  210 , the database  110  stores the client message, and each client message includes the client data and the purchase history. In a step  220 , the server  150  continuously transmits the information of predetermined promotional products and the advertisement link which are then displayed on the display device of the electronic billboard  120  continuously. In a step  230 , each shelf  130  is positioned by IoT, and the current product displaying message of each shelf  130  is transmitted and instantly updated through IoT. In a step  240 , the server  150  receives the current product displaying message of each shelf  130  and provides the shopping interface. In a step  250 , the mobile device  140  logs into the shopping interface according to the client data, to create the order list corresponding to the client data. In a step  260 , the server  150  sieves out the shelf  130  according to the order list created by the mobile device  140  and the current product displaying messages of the shelves  130 , to generate the shopping route, the map and the product position message and transmits the shopping route, the map and the product position message to the mobile device  140  for display, and the order list created by the mobile device  140  is stored in the database  110  as the purchase history. Through aforementioned steps, the shelves  130  may be positioned and the product displaying messages may be transmitted through IoT, and the server  150  provides the shopping interface according to the product displaying messages; after the mobile device  140  logs into the shopping interface and creates the order list, the server  150  sieves out corresponding shelf according to the order list and the product displaying messages to generate the shopping route, the map and the product position message for display, thereby guiding the user for shopping. 
     It is to be noted that the method may include a step  270  after the step  260 . In the step  270 , the server  150  analyzes the purchase history corresponding to the same client message by time period, to generate purchase preference corresponding to the client and store the purchase preference in the database  110 . As a result, a personalization shopping interface may be provided according to the purchase preference. For example, the product meeting the purchase preference may be displayed on a home page of the shopping interface, or be enlarged or highlighted on the shopping interface. 
     The following refers to an embodiment in cooperation with  FIGS. 3 and 4  for illustration of the present disclosure. Please refer to  FIG. 3 , which is a schematic view of the shelf and instantly-updated current product displaying message of the present disclosure. The shelves  310  and  320  are configured to display products  311 ,  312 , and  321 ˜ 323 , and each of the shelves  310  and  320  is positioned by IoT, and the current product displaying messages  330  and  340  of the shelves  310  and  320  is updated instantly through IoT. The updated product displaying messages  330  and  340  are transmitted to the server  150 . The server  150  may generate the shopping interface according to the product displaying messages  330  and  340  of the shelves  310  and  320 , thereby preventing the shopping interface from displaying the sold-out product. After the mobile device  140  logs into the shopping interface, the product displayed on the shelves  310  and  320  may be browsed on the shopping interface, and the user may perform shopping operation to create the order list. In actual implementation, the current product displaying messages  330  and  340  may be instantly updated by RFID, for example, RFID tags may be separately disposed on the displayed products  311 ,  312 , and  321 ˜ 323  in advance, and readers corresponding to the RFID tags are separately disposed on the shelves  310  and  320 . The readers are configured to continuously emit RF signals to read the RFID tags of the displayed products  311 ,  312  and  321 ˜ 323 , so as to obtain messages. When the client takes the displayed product  311 , the reader of the shelf  310  may detect absence of the RFID tag of the displayed product  311 , so that the current product displaying message  320  is then updated, for example, the message of “product A, quantity 1” may be deleted, or modified as “product A, quantity 0”. 
     Please refer to  FIG. 4 , which is a schematic view of the shopping route, the map and the product position message of the present disclosure. According to aforementioned content, the server  150  sieves out a target shelf  130  from all shelves  130  according to the order list created by the mobile device  140  and the current product displaying messages of the shelves  130 , to generate the shopping route, the map and the product position message, and transmits the shopping route, the map and the product position message to the mobile device  140  for display. For example, suppose that the order list includes the product A and the product B, and current product displaying message of the shelf A includes the product A, and the current product displaying message of the shelf B includes the product B; the server  150  may sieve out the shelves A and B from all shelves  130 , and then calculate a shortest route among the mobile device  140 , the shelves A and B according to a current position of the mobile device  140  and the current positions of the shelves A and B, and use the shortest route as the shopping route  420  which is displayed in cooperation with the map  410 , and the product position messages  431  and  432 . In actual implementation, the map  410  may be a shopping mall floor plan in cooperation with electronic billboard icons  411  and the shelf icons  412  which are displayed on the shopping mall floor plan at corresponding positions. The product position messages  431  and  432  may be displayed correspondingly to display positions of the shelves including the products which the user wants to purchase; for example, as shown in  FIG. 4 , the product position messages  431  and  432  are displayed by halftone; in other embodiment, the product position messages  431  and  432  may be displayed by text of product name, quantity, or a combination thereof; in other embodiment, the product position messages  431  and  432  may be displayed by color areas. 
     Furthermore, in actual implementation, the shopping route  420 , the map  410  and the product position messages  431  and  432  generated by the server  150  may be transmitted to the electronic billboard  120 , which is nearest to the mobile device  140 , for display. For example, the electronic billboard icons  411  at upper left corner and bottom of  FIG. 4  respectively indicate the two electronic billboards  120  existing at the shopping mall, and the positions of the two electronic billboards  120  and the shelves  130  may be determined through IoT. As a result, when the mobile device  140  is located at the area of the upper left corner of the map, the shopping route  420 , the map  410  and the product position messages  431  and  432  may be displayed on the electronic billboard  120  located at the area of the upper left corner of the map, so that the shopper may easily browse the shopping route displayed on the nearby electronic billboard  120  without watching the relatively small screen of the mobile device  140 . 
     To summarize, the difference between the present disclosure and the conventional technology is that, in the system and method of the present disclosure, the shelves are positioned through IoT and the product displaying messages of the shelves are transmitted through IoT, and the server provides the shopping interface according to the product displaying messages, and after the mobile device logs into the shopping interface and creates the order list, the server sieves out the shelf according to the order list and the product displaying messages to generate the shopping route, the map and the product position message to guide user for shopping. By using above technical means, the conventional technology problem may be solved, and the technical effect of improving shopping convenience may be achieved. 
     The present disclosure disclosed herein has been described by means of specific embodiments. However, numerous modifications, variations and enhancements can be made thereto by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention set forth in the claims.