Second+Assignment

**^^^ what I submitted- Camille** Our system will expand upon the idea of "Contactless smart cards". A contactless smart card is a card that stores information data and signals the receiving terminal via radio waves **reference?**. This means that communication between the card and the reader will require no contact at all. Department stores will sell these contactless smart cards that can be credited with money(sort of like gift cards) to use to purchase items. The exit of the store will contain these reading terminals that can read the exact number of items in the shopping cart as well as what the items are. That way, when a consumer buys a product, all he/she has to do is walk through the exit and the items will be automatically purchased and the balance will automatically be deducted from the card. This technology integrates the idea of RFID. RFID makes it possible to give each product in a grocery store its own unique identifying number, that way the receiver device can know what items are being purchased to deduct the amount owing from the card.
 * Our Technology:**

One of the major problems associated with this technology is the idea of bulk reading. A parallel reading of tags may not guarantee a perfect read of every item due to collision effects. Shopping containers provided by the store (grocery basket, shopping carts) will contain a embedded scanner within the container that calculates the total balance of purchases. The checkout procedure will then be the same as before but instead of bulk reading, the shopping container would provide the total amount as to purchased products.
 * Problem with this technology:**

Large department stores such as Walmart already have RFID chips embedded into all of their products, therefore incorporating our technology with large companies such as theirs will not be too much of a hassle. Checkout clerks will still exist for customers that don't want to use this method of checkout, our system basically just makes paying a little easier, user friendly and much more efficient.
 * Usage**

[] [] [] []
 * Basic concept:**

Fujitsu testing U-Scan Shopper smart shopping cart
[]

The purpose of our system is to decrease the number of point of sale transactions during peak hours in busy department stores.This will reduce long lineups and it increases efficiency and provides a simplistic positive shopping experience for customers.
 * Purpose:**

The users of our system will be consumers who shop at department stores where our system is implemented. Specifically users who are in a hurry or find waiting in line too much of a hassle or annoying. No single age demographic is targeted, every consumer will be a user. The use of contactless smart cards as a purchasing medium is used all around, Mastercard has a PayPass campaign that allows users to scan these cards(instead of swiping) as an easier way of paying. Our proposal is the convergence of this technology with RFID technology to allow the quickest, most efficient way of buying a product - by just picking it up and walking through the door.
 * Users:**
 * Current system in place:**

[] <--- Prices of RFID and Readers (Readers cost about $500 and tags costs $0.05) [] < Smartcard Price (About 50cents per card)
 * Pricing:**
 * []** <--- (Cost of scanner for grocery container -- $30~$60)