Authors:
Susan Brosnan, Daniel Goins, Patricia Hogan, Jessica Snead
Abstract:
This solution proposes using digital watermarks to allow Retailers to quickly audit bags that were sealed at various checkouts in the Store to verify that sealed bags remained sealed and prevent tampering with the bags that could include adding unpaid for Merchandise.
Background:
Retailers would like to spread checkout locations throughout the retail environment, both to help with the appearance/frustration of long lines at the front of the store and to more effectively and aesthetically design the store layout. The difficulty with having alternative checkout locations is that nefarious actors could leave with more in their shopping bags than they purchased. After packing the bag (or having it packed for them), a nefarious actor could toss in some razor blades and caviar on their stroll out of the store.
Retail Stores already have cameras at checkout locations watching the customer and verifying that product is being purchased. But it is not cost effective or easy to track a customer through the store after they have finished the purchase in an aisle. Cameras can be employed to do this in every aisle, but that is expensive to retrofit cameras everywhere and requires high processing costs to track customers and watch their movements. There needs to be a cheaper way to more effectively audit customers leaving the store.
Description:
The solution is to be able to verify at the point of exit that the bags packed by the customer (or employee) at the alternative checkout site were not opened between being packed and leaving the store. To do this, a digital watermark can be printed on the bag at the time of dispensing (imagine a paper bag) before it is sealed (with tape, a sticker or other means). Alternatively, the digital watermark could be printed on sealing sticker itself that is required for the bag. This watermark could be a complex image or a digital watermark bar code containing data about the time of sale.
Because these are digital watermarks, the customer would not be able to see them on the bag. If the customer were to open the bag after leaving the monitored alternative checkout area, it would be highly unlikely that the customer would be able to match up the seal so that all the digital watermarks were correct.
At time of exit, the bags would be scanned to see if one of the digital watermarks was not correct. This could come in the form of
- One of the digital watermark bar codes was seen by the camera, but not readable as a bar code because it was damaged
- One of the digital watermark bar codes was seen by the camera and is readable with major correctively scanning technology, so flagged as damaged
- One of the digital watermark images was seen to not match the other images on the bag, because it had been damaged
- One of the digital watermark images did not match the image associated with the customer who is currently leaving the store. The watermark image could have been stored with biometric or tracking information about the customer collected transiently at checkout, which is then matched up at the point of exit.
At the point of exit, there are multiple ways that the store could audit for this damage.
These bags could be scanned automatically by cameras as the customer is walking with them in hand (less likely to catch damage) or in the cart at the point of exit.
The customer could be required to put the bags on a table, which are monitored by cameras, at the point of exit.
The customer's bags could be scanned quickly with a handheld optical scanner by a point of exit attendant (think the Costco model).
If a bag is found to have a damaged digital watermark, then a human or other known auditing technique could be used to check whether the customer did something improper or not.
Enabling Technology:
1. Tamper evident labels
https://barcode-labels.com /solutions/asset-labels/security-labels/
Existing tamper evident labels today rely on someone checking t he label area to see if
something has changed compared to when the label was applied (ie, when the label is
removed, the label comes apart in pieces, or the word VOID appears).
2. Tamper evident bags
https://www.mrtakeoutb ags.com/product/XFSCPTR211510-2MIL.html?
gclid=EAIaIQobChMImo7Y7OHfgQMVyebICh1cCwyuEAQYECABEgJ7m_D_BwE
3. Authentication Method and System
https://patents.google.com/patent/US1 0275675B1
This describes methods to scan objects and images and extract the watermark data from
the image.
TGCS Reference 4012
