Social Distance Shopping Using Embedded Based Auto Cart and Android App

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is an alarming disease outbreak that has affected more than 180 countries worldwide. It has caused close to 2.5 million deaths and has infected 114 million of the global population as of February 2021. This unprecedented pandemic, has caused severe socio-economic problems globally, catching many sectors off-guard and in a state of suspended uncertainty. While vaccines are circulating, there is still a need to practice some social norms, including social distancing during daily activities such as supermarket shopping. As such, contactless technology is critically needed and preferable to minimize physical contact and mitigate virus spread. In this project, an automated shopping cart is proposed as a potential solution to avoid item scanning at cashiers and long queues at payment counters. This innovation leads to reduced risk of exposure to COVID-19. This is done by integrating a typical shopping trolley with Web Server using PHP. A radio frequency identification (RFID) tag is attached to every product and automatically read whenever they are placed in a shopping cart. As the shopper adds more things it is detected by the module and the price according to that increases. At the end of shopping the shopper will press the button which when pressed adds all the product along with their price and gives the total bill to be paid. In this Social distance alerting is shown by using Ultrasonic Sensor. Whenever distance is crossed buzzer will be given.

Keywords: Social Distance, Raspberry Pi, RFID Reader, Bluetooth App