Implementation of radio frequency identification technology for a secure and intelligent shopping cart

Abstract

Shopping at supermarkets has become a daily activity in urban areas of Enugu, Nigeria. However, there is always a huge rush in most mega supermarkets during times of discount offers, weekends and holidays resulting in long queues due to the barcode billing process. This research proposes a way of reducing the time spent at the billing counter using a radio frequency identification (RFID) smart-based shopping cart. To achieve this objective, an RFID tag, RFID reader, Arduino microcontroller and light-emitting diode (LED) display were used to develop a smart shopping trolley. RFID tag was placed on each of the eight products displayed for sale. RFID reader reads all the products that were placed on the cart and the details of the product such as the name, quantity, cost, and total cost was displayed on the LED. The smart shopping trolley system also incorporates an alarm system that triggers off when the RFID tag is removed from a product to avoid shoplifting and make the system secure for the owners of the supermarket. The result showed that the billing of the products was done directly from the smart shopping cart. The system was compared with the conventional barcode system and was found to overcome the limitations of time-consuming billing procedures.