Design and Development of a Raspberry Pi-Based Shopping Cart Following Robot through Computer Vision and Object Tracking Method

摘要

The proliferation of big supermarkets and shopping centers around the world has added to the rapid development of robot technology. In this study a shopper-follower robot was developed to lessen the effort of shoppers especially in grocery areas or supermarkets. The Raspberry Pi-Based Shopping Cart Following Robot uses Raspberry Pi microcomputer which serves as the brain of the system where every module is connected and Python is the programming language that is used for the system. It has a barcode scanner that allows the shopper to scan products and provide an initial bill. The ultrasonic sensor determines the distance between the front side of the shopping cart whether if it is in the waiting state or follow state; it uses Arduino as a connection from its output to the inputs of the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ to eliminate delays of direct connection to Raspberry Pi microcomputer. Another ultrasonic sensor can be found on both sides of the shopping cart to determine obstacles that will be avoided by the shopping cart. The load cell sensor is also used to determine the weight of the products/ items in the shopping cart; it uses the Arduino IDE to develop algorithms that can be used to calibrate weight measurements. The buzzer will serve as the alarm if the weight of the shopping cart reaches above the given maximum weight. The buzzer will also alarm once the shopping cart loses contact with the shopper; the shopping cart has a maximum allowable distance of one (1) meter to the shopper. Also, the robot was equipped with webcam so that it can follow a shopper through computer vision-based algorithm and object tracking. By having several trials, the object tracking method that is used is the Channel and Spatial Reliability Tracking (CSRT), for it is much capable of determining the shopping cart's owner throughout the duration time of shopping. As a result, the Raspberry Pi-Based Shopping Cart Following Robot functions well and had performed its intended operation.