Patent ID: 8690057

Claim:
An inventory tracking system for use in tracking placement of physical items within an inventory tracking region, comprising: a radio frequency tag detection system including: a plurality of radio frequency antennas disposed in a spaced apart manner within the inventory tracking region; and a detection controller coupled to the plurality of radio frequency antennas, the detection controller including a beam-steering control system that controls the operation of each of the radio frequency antennas, wherein one of the plurality of radio frequency antennas uses a beam to scan a portion of the inventory tracking region to detect a current physical location of one or more radio frequency tags disposed in a scanned portion of the inventory tracking region, wherein the current physical location corresponds to a position defined by two coordinate units in a multi-dimensional coordinate system and the value of each of the two coordinate units is determined by the one of the plurality of radio frequency antennas, and wherein the detection controller generates indications of the one or more detected radio frequency tags and the current physical locations of the one or more detected radio frequency tags in the scanned portion within the inventory tracking region; and a tracking system coupled to the radio frequency tag detection system to receive the indications of the one or more detected radio frequency tags and the current physical locations of the one or more detected radio frequency tags in the scanned portion within the inventory tracking region, the tracking system including: a memory for storing inventory item information for each of a plurality of inventory items, the inventory item information for each of the plurality of inventory items including an inventory item radio frequency tag identifier, inventory item identification information defining the identity of the inventory item, and an indication of the current physical location of the inventory item within the inventory tracking region; and an access system that accesses the memory and provides at least a subset of the inventory item information for one or more of the inventory items to a user for determining the current physical location of the one or more of the inventory items within the inventory tracking region, wherein the tracking system updates the indication of the current physical location of at least one particular inventory item within the inventory tracking region as stored in the memory for the at least one particular inventory item based on the indication of the current physical location of the one or more detected radio frequency tags for at the least one particular inventory item as produced by the detection controller.