Patent ID: 8448857

Claim:
A method, comprising: providing a plurality of for-sale items in a brick-and-mortar store, wherein each item comprises an identification tag that uniquely identifies the item or category of item; placing one or more of the items in a first shopping cart, and transporting the first shopping cart to a checkout station; positioning the first shopping cart at an unloading zone at the checkout station and positioning a second shopping cart at a loading zone at the checkout station; moving the items from the first shopping cart to the second shopping cart and using at least one tag-reading machine to remotely machine-read the identification tags on each item being moved to the second shopping cart; identifying each item having an identification tag in response to the machine-reading; and detecting when the first shopping cart is in the unloading zone and, in response, automatically locking the first shopping cart in place until all of the items have been moved from the first shopping cart to the second shopping cart.