The Speed Shopper System

Transcription

1 Mark Dunn, Yoon Jae Kim, Barrett Shay CSE 537 Class Project: Wireless Innovation The Speed Shopper System The purpose of technology is to provide a new or better way to perform a task. The technology is especially useful if it offers improvements for tasks that are done many times by many people. Most Americans get their food by shopping at grocery stores at least once a week or so. We propose a system that we believe will make grocery shopping easier and faster for millions of Americans. The Speed Shopper system takes advantage of new & emerging developments in wireless technology to improve the shopping experience. These days most people have cell phones, but not all of them have the more sophisticated smart phones that allow higher functions beyond making phone calls, such as internet access. However, the trend is towards phones providing more and more functionality and we assume it will only be a few years until smart phones become the norm. Another assumption we make is the proliferation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags on nearly all consumer goods, including food items. These devices can be used to store relevant information about a product, and can be easily and quickly queried for the information. System Requirements The Speed Shopper system provides our customers with services to simplify shopping for groceries by keeping an inventory of items he or she currently has in the home, determining what items are needed and creating a shopping list, and providing location information for the items in the grocery store. For this goal, the Speed Shopper system consists of two subsystems: a User Home Based RFID System, and a Grocery Information System. The User Home Based RFID System provides the following functions: - To know which items the customer has and how many. - To know when new items should be purchased. - To store this information. - To allow this information to be accessed over the internet. The Grocery Information System provides the following functions: - To manage the customer s shopping list. - To provide information on the customer s current location, and on the location of items in the grocery store. - To provide the user interface for the customer to get her shopping information on her cell phone. System Architectural Design To meet the requirements definition we propose a five part design: 1) RFID Interrogators - has RFID sensor and Bluetooth interface 2) Base Station - has Bluetooth and WiFi interfaces 3) Website - has database of store maps and food items 4) Cell Phone - has Bluetooth interface and Internet access 5) Localization Stations - has Bluetooth interface We assume each food item will have an RFID tag containing information about the item such as its name, short description, serial number, and expiration date. The RFID Interrogators and Base Station will be purchased by the shopper and kept in the home. The RFID Interrogators can be placed anywhere food is stored: refrigerator, pantry, or cupboard. Their job will be to read the RFID tags on each item of food and relay the data to the Base Station via Bluetooth. The Base Station will issue a query, collect the data from the RFID Interrogators, and send it to the Speed Shopper website using either WiFi or Ethernet to access the shopper s high speed internet connection. On the website, the shopper can set up threshold quantities of items (the number of an item the shopper wants to always have stocked), and add new desired items. Using the expiration date, threshold quantities, and input from the shopper, the website will create a shopping list. Once at the grocery store, the customer can access the Speed Shopper website on his phone through Speed Shopper software. He can choose the appropriate store map and shopping list, and the location of all items from the shopping list will be displayed on the map. Around the 1

2 store there will be Localization Stations, communicated to using Bluetooth, which the customer can use to update his location on the store map. Grocery Product RFID Tag RFID Interrogator Localization Station Base Station Internet / Website Cell Phone System Interfaces Figure 1 Illustration of Speed Shopper architectural design. RFID Tags and Interrogators The RFID tag and the interrogator communicate information between one another via radio waves. When a tagged object enters the read zone of an interrogator, the interrogator signals the tag to transmit its stored data. Passive RFID tags have no on-board power source. Instead, they derive power to transmit data from the signal by the interrogator. As a result of this, passive tags are typically smaller and less expensive to produce and the effective range of passive tags is two feet or less. The RFID interrogator has anti-collision algorithms, which enables an interrogator to communicate with many tags at once. There are three types of anti-collision techniques: spatial, frequency, and time domain. All three are used to establish either a pecking order or a measure of randomness. RFID Interrogators and Base Station There will be a Bluetooth interface between the RFID Interrogators and the Base Station for the purpose of relaying the collected data from the RFID tags. The RFID Interrogators will be class 2 Bluetooth slave devices and the Base Station will be a class 1 master device, and the data transfer will be Asynchronous Connectionless. This will give the sensors a range of 10 meters, if not more. According to the Bluetooth protocol, there can be at most 7 active slave devices controlled by a master (called a piconet). However, there can be up to 255 inactive slave devices as well. So, we allocate 7 RFID Interrogators for each food location: pantry, refrigerator, cupboard, etc. When an inventory is requested, the Base Station will wake up the piconets one at a time and command the sensors to take an inventory. Each sensor will return all the RFID information it collects. There may be some overlap, i.e. two sensors may see the same food item and return the same data. The Base Station will use the serial numbers and other data to decide if there are any duplicates and discard them. The RFID Interrogators will be powered by rechargeable batteries. Internet Data/Cell Phone Application Our system will provide the internet infrastructure and software necessary to make the system operate. This infrastructure will include servers used to store the data, and the web interface for user interaction. The user will access the data for his list of groceries via a cell phone application, or via a standard http website that can be accessed via a PC. Home User Data The home user data will be stored on our servers, and will be associated with every user's username and password similar to most every website in operation today. The user data that needs to be stored is threshold quantities of items, current quantities, and the list of items to be purchased by the user at the store. The list of groceries on our servers can be generated and maintained either using the detailed and accurate information provided by RFID, or by inputting the data directly into a website or via the cell phone application. 2

3 Grocery Store Data Grocery stores that participate in the system will have the option to make map data available to our system. This data will include simple maps of the store, and the location of the items in the store. We would provide a simple API that would let stores build their store map in an application, and it would generate a list file that would be kept on our servers, and interpreted by our cell phone application. Cell Phone Application Our application will allow the user to navigate the store, see his or her list, and localize in accordance with the localization protocol explained later. The Application will have three basic functions: 1. List generation and review. 2. Store navigation to the items in the store. 3. Localization if the user gets lost in the store. Given a list of items, the cell phone application will calculate the fastest route through the store based on the entry point of the user, the location of the items on the list, and the layout of the grocery store. This route will be displayed on the cell phone. A notional route display is shown in Figure 2. Aisle 10: Frozen Foods Path to French Fries French Fries Aisle 11 Path to Tacos Tacos Path to Bread Aisle 12: Mexican and Bread Bread Figure 2 - Notional Cell Phone Application Map. Recipe Data Another attractive feature that we will implement after the basic infrastructure is in place is a recipe system, where a user will be able to search through our database of recipes from his/her cell phone. When one is selected, our software will compare the contents of that recipe to the user's refrigerator/pantry contents to determine which items the users needs to buy in order to make that item. Coupon Data The final feature we will add is a coupon database feature. This feature will evaluate a user's list of items, and automatically identify coupons available for those items. The user can print these coupons from the web before going to the store. Phone to Localization Station 3

4 The interface between the shopper s phone and the Localization Stations will be Bluetooth. If the shopper ever wants to pinpoint his location in the store, he can walk near a Localization Station and query it for its pre-programmed location. In this situation the phone will be the master and the station will be a Class 2 slave, so the maximum distance to create a connection between them will be 10 meters. The phone will automatically detect the station. The user can then select the localization option on the phone via the Speed Shopper software, and it will request the location data from the station. This information is then used to update the shopper s position on the store map. Market Potential We have three separate systems being sold to two different customers. Software for the phone We intend to provide the software for the phone for free. Anyone would be able to download the software and sign up for the service. This would provide an online list that would be accessed by the user via the cell phone application. We will charge a premium fee to customers that want to see the location of their list items in the grocery store, and have the phone calculate the fastest route through the store. The market size for the software is the entire cell phone market which represents about 200 million users in the US. The realistic penetration rate for this product within those users is around 5%. This represents about 10 Million users. The goal is for 20% of those users to sign up for the premium service. A reasonable price for the premium service is likely between $5 and $10 per month. $5 per month x 12 months x 2 million users results in $120 Million in yearly revenue. We have also evaluated a pay per use scenario, where a user only pays when he or she uses the system. This may be attractive to users who shop sporadically. Revenue from this stream would replace some revenue from above, but may provide additional transient revenue on top of the $120 Million. Another potential revenue stream would leverage the recipe upload and view capability. Major food vendors could upload recipes requiring their ingredients, and if a user accesses that recipe, we would receive a small payment similar to ad click business on the internet. Additionally, vendors could advertise their recipes/products in our cell phone application. For this to become a significant revenue contributor, our system would have to become well accepted, but the revenue is potentially large with access to 2 million users. Also, the coupon print feature of the web application would provide a similar opportunity, which we would receive a small per-print payment for coupons that are downloaded. Not currently part of the business model, but a potential market would be pre-installation on carriers cell phones, and users could pay for the service as part of their regular phone plan. This scenario could increase the market penetration number significantly. Grocery store equipment and data system We intend to offer the capability to upload grocery store product map data to our servers free of charge. Grocery stores would only have to install the Localization Stations in their stores if they wanted to offer the service. Each Localization Station will likely cost around $50, so $2000 worth of infrastructure investment would result in 40 locating devices throughout the store, which should be enough for most stores. Additionally, grocery stores only have to install the number of devices they want to install. Grocery store motivation for participating will be the low cost to participate and the fact that users are more likely to shop at that grocery store if they can use the map on their cell phone to navigate to the products as quickly as possible. We also intend to make the grocery store map creation software available to users, so if a grocery store is not participating in our system, users can make a map of the grocery store, and upload it to our servers creating an open source grocery store map repository. This will keep the grocery store map feature viable even if we don't get wide spread grocery store participation. This capability also keeps the purchase of the home based RFID system more enticing even without the grocery store repository. User Home Based RFID system The home based RFID system and data server will be the highest cost item, and would be procured by the user. The goal is for the RFID system to cost the user around $250. The potential market size is upper middle class and up households which represents approximately 50 million households. The realistic penetration rate for the system is likely around 2%, which represents 1 million households/systems for potential revenue of $250 Million. System Acceptance As with any new technology, the primary problem will be user acceptance and usage of the product. We believe that by making the original application free, we will gain some initial market penetration. The next step will be to partner with major food vendors and grocery stores to improve awareness of the product, and to make the system more attractive. With 4

5 numerous recipes and stores participating, the system will become more attractive to the user, the more attractive to grocery stores, then to advertisers, and the chain perpetuates itself. Another system acceptance hurdle is the current lack of RFID sensors in food. This is beginning to take off with major chains like Wal-Mart beginning to require RFID. Even though RFID is not ubiquitous now, it will be in the future, and we'll be well positioned to exploit it. In the mean time, our manual user input of grocery items, and the recipe search will sustain our value until these tags are proliferated. Conclusion The speed shopper system has the potential to provide significant steady yearly subscription revenues of over $100 Million, and hardware sales augmenting that revenue stream. The system also offers the everyday person an elegant solution for a not elegant task, and we believe it is exactly the type of practical technology many users desire. The speed shopper system also adds value to grocery stores who implement it, and to food vendors who sell food in those stores who support the system. It represents a win-win-win situation which is why we believe it would be successful. 5