PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16145326
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-09
Publication Date: 2019-04
Patent Classification: ["235", "385000"]

Abstract:
In some embodiments, apparatuses and methods are provided herein useful to detect shopping carts and/or estimate the number of shopping carts in a specified area of a retail facility. In some embodiments, detected magnetic fields from an area are compared with values from a database to estimate the number of shopping carts present, and notifications may be provided regarding actions to be taken based on the arrangement and density of shopping carts in the area.

Claim (Index 11):
An apparatus for estimating a quantity of stored shopping carts in a shopping cart storage area of a retail facility, the apparatus comprising:\n a shopping cart storage unit comprising:\n an open end configured to receive and dispense the shopping carts; \n a closed end opposite the open end and configured to contain the shopping carts in a storage volume between the open end and the closed end; \n at least two generally parallel retention members connecting portions of the open end to corresponding portions of the closed end, each retention member having a length and spaced apart from each other by a width, to form the storage volume having a length and width sized to receive a plurality of shopping carts organized in one or more single-file lines between the generally parallel retention members; and \n a linear array of unidirectional magnetic field sensors configured to detect a magnitude of an induced electromagnetic field, wherein the magnitude of the induced electromagnetic field varies depending on a presence of metal objects in the storage volume, the unidirectional magnetic field at approximately the same vertical position and oriented to face the storage volume and not face volumes outside of the storage volume, the magnetic sensors spaced apart along the length of at least one retention member and each supplied with an amount of power from a power source so that zones of respective magnetic sensors do not overlap; and an electronic control circuit comprising a computer memory positioned at the storage area and physically coupled to the plurality of magnetic sensors; wherein the control circuit is configured to generate a notification identifying each of the magnetic sensors that detect an electromagnetic field exceeding a preset magnitude within a time window.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 20.0
- Percentile: 97.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.70213
- Patent Class: 235.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['13857006', '11277016', '12202075', '15479658', '13850220']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.5785500358567536
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4719234845568713
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.5678873807267654
- Mean Citation Score: 190.540432
- Max Citation Score: 194.67514
- Similarity Product: 137.56621662229537

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test