USA Technologies, Inc.

Cantaloupe Systems, Inc.

Justin Grant

Mandeep Singh Arora

Anant Agrawal

Boris Glants

Iryna Bandura

Allen Aung Kyaw Lwin

Edward Jansson

Peter Lessels

Allan Stewart

Michael Marett

Oleksa Chvala

Tamara Baker

Igor Schtein

Lee Tanenbaum

Amedee Louis Beaudoin

Oleksii Chvala

Systems for vending products to a customer that encompasses a group of co-located vending machines managed by a vending company, a database of current inventory of products in the vending machines and customer purchase history; and the use of a personal electronic device by the customer. Embodiments include a single order by a customer from a sorted list of prior purchases, and where a single purchase comprises sub-products from multiple co-located vending machines. Embodiments include the customer selecting either products or vending machines from a list of options provided via the user interface of the personal electronic device, wherein the list of options depends on the actual available inventory in vending machines co-located with the customer, and the customer purchase history.

Method and system of personal vending

A security bin and a security bin controller are described that measure fullness or height of secure contents in a security bin; listen to radio beacons over a short-range radio to determine a bin distance from a first radio, such as by measuring received radio power; determine one of three bin security states: home, caution or warning; and then broadcast a status message, warning message or alarm message over long-range radio, dependent on both the fullness of the bin and the security state. Embodiments include shredder bins, adapted to receive secure or confidential documents. Status messages may be used to initiate a search for a lost bin or to schedule bin service. Embodiments include measuring rate-of-fill. Alarm messages may be responsive to both bin location and fill volume. Embodiments and use of a controller include waste bins, including industrial or medical waste.

Portable security bin

A method is described for the automatic determination of a planogram in a vending machine using image processing. Novel steps include the use of a Gaussian map in a two-dimensional color space, such as the HS plane, to create high-dimensionally color vectors for all and for selected portions of images. Multiple feature detection/extraction algorithms are run between multiple idealized reference images for a product and one image from one vending machine coil location. The large resulting candidate feature list is pruned in a series of steps using both color and gray-scale color vectors and small area image matching around features. Remaining candidate features are ranked by a RANSAC outlier removal step, with the top ranked product then being the correct product in that coil in the planogram. Steps are repeated for all coils in a vending machine.

Method and device of automatically determining a planogram in vending

A system and method for vending products to a customer that encompasses a group of vending machines managed by a vending company, a database of the inventory of products in the vending machines and information about customer purchase history from the vending machines; and the use of a personal electronic device by the customer. Embodiments include the customer selecting either products or vending machines from a list of options provided via the user interface of the personal electronic device, wherein the list of options depends on the actual available inventory on vending machines co-located with customer, and the customer purchase history. Methods are described to permit advance purchases with deferred dispensing, and methods of payment that are both fast and automatic. Also described are methods of identifying vending machines and ordering a group of products as single request.

Growing community of inventors

Berkeley, CA, United States of America

Justin Grant