Patent ID: 8126195

Claim:
A graphical method of retail item identification, the method implemented with at least one digital camera and a plurality of point-of-sale (‘POS’) terminals, the POS terminals connected for data communications through a data communications network, the POS terminals comprising automated computing machinery having disposed within it instances of an image decoding module, a task assignment engine, and an item identification engine, the method comprising: receiving, from the digital camera, an image of a retail item to be identified; decoding, by an image decoding module, the image into one or more image processing tasks; assigning, by a task assignment engine, the one or more image processing tasks to one or more of the POS terminals, the one or more POS terminals characterized as image processing terminals; executing the image processing tasks by the image processing terminals, including reporting results of the image processing tasks to an item identification engine; and identifying, by the item identification engine upon completion of the image processing tasks by the image processing terminals, the retail item.