Associating shoppers together

Abstract

A store having an automated checkout can automatically associate multiple shoppers with a single purchase. For example, a mother and her children can walk independently through the store and select items. Upon checkout, the items selected by the mother and children can all be charged to the mother's credit card in a single purchase. The system and method discussed herein can capture images of multiple shoppers from one or more video streams of a store area, can associate the multiple shoppers with one another from the captured images when the multiple shoppers appear together in a check-in area of the store, can track the movement of the multiple shoppers within the store from the captured images, can track items selected by the multiple shoppers from the captured images, and can initiate a transaction that charges the selected items to an account associated with one of the multiple shoppers.