INT-CART is an autonomous intelligent robotic shopping cart that was designed to enhance the physical shopping experience. It offers hands-free & effortless shopping with help from the intelligent autonomous mobile robot base that can follow or guide the customers while shopping. It also promotes inclusive engagement for the elderly, toted parents, and people with disabilities, as well as aligns with growing consumer demand for eco-friendly and responsible practices in the industry sector.
Before developing this solution, I have made few surveys with the locals to gather information about conventional shopping and their opinion about the robotic AI Cart. The findings are shown at the figure above, with majority of respondents agreed to have maneuver and navigation issue while agreed to use and implement AI Cart at retails. At the right side are expected features that respondents suggest.
Problem Statement and Solutions
Through observation and research, I have identify two main problems with conventional shopping cart, which are difficulty in find the items that we want and handling the cart movement. Therefore, the objective is to design dual-mode configurations, autonomous guidance and person-following function to solve both problems above. The working principle is shown in the figure above.
The INT-CART comes with dual-mode configurations for control. It adheres to the Asian Shopping Cart standard and uses Lidar for navigation and RealSense Camera for detection. The cart's driving wheels manage propulsion and steering, with a linkage system for guidance. The display monitor displays market options and products. The basket cage accommodates a shopping basket, and the Adafruit PCA9685 motor driver controls the wheels movement. The NVIDIA Jetson Nano serves as it the main processor. The 10-inch display is the medium where the cart can interact with users.
My journey to start develop this cart due to compete in ROBOTHON 2023: Industrial Design Challenge, organized by MRANTI & SCUTTLE Robotics Asia and gracefully, I won second runner-up in that competition. Throughout the journey, many collaborations and discussion have been made with academics and professional industry to validate stronger my idea. Some big players in Malaysia like Eureka Robotics Centre from Cardiff Metropolitan University and Move Robotics from Cyberjaya have visit to discuss further about the implementation.
Meanwhile, Retailetics and DreamEDGE as this project strategic partner.
I hope that INT-CART will brings a significant contribution to the retail and shopping sector, as it has been designed as a person-following and autonomous guidance shopping cart that can improve accessibility for different type of customers especially those with disabilities, elderly and toted parents. Furthermore, INT-CART is expected to meet the requirement from SDG 11 which is sustainable cities and communities while gives massive impact to community and industry.
The Demo
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