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Walmart Patents Cart That Reads Your Pulse, Temperature (vice.com)
Walmart recently applied to patent biometric shopping handles that would track a shopper's heart rate, palm temperature, grip force, and walking speed. "The patent, titled 'System And Method For A Biometric Feedback Cart Handle' and published August 23, outlines a system where sensors in the cart send data to a server," reports Motherboard. "That server then notifies a store employee to check on individual customers." From the report: Over time, the server can build a database of data compared against store location and stress response, the patent says -- potentially valuable information for store planning. Other uses outlined in the patent include a pulse oximeter, for detecting when a customer's about to pass out, and a weight-triggered assisted push feature for propelling the cart itself. CBInsights suggests that these alerts could warn associates when several shoppers need help at the same time, or anticipate when arguments are about to break out.
I go to a gym. I can ride a bike, climb a mountain, or row a boat. Every fricken one of these machines has a display that shows me the exact same info, plus more regarding how hard I've been working.
Somebody explain to me with a straight face how Walmart can patent something that I've seen in use for a good 4.5 years now.
Fingerprints are next...
... if I call it an art project?
Wal-Mart shopping carts is the location of the anti-bacterial wipes in the front of the store.
God only knows what the previous user of the cart did with it. Up to and including cooking meth...
Can u imagine what Walmart can do if they find out that cheese makes your heart race... Or a new DVD player.... It is already bad enough the monitoring of the free WiFi or the loyalty programs or how the the cameras monitor our shopping paytwrns to get layouts of stores..... Walmart trying to monetize their customers vital signs just disgusting
I worked there. nobody gives a fuck. Only reason is to "please" the BoD.
Fuck 'em...
Which are made with anti-microbial materials which also block thermal, pulse, and fingerprint readings on the bottom of my hands which are used to grip the shopping carts.
Just asking for a friend who is privacy and health concious.
It should trigger on overweight wal-mart customers, and notify the store's main computer system for, oh, I don't know, reasons. To be especially sensitive to signs of a heart attack, especially if they are in the potato chip and fried pie aisle?
Captcha: casket
Now they can sell the data to your health insurance provider to hike your rates in real-time instead of having to wait.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
And they might have a bic lighter to test the limits of the temperature monitor. I hate touching those damn carts already! For that matter I hate sharing the air in these shops. Instead of monitoring my temperature, they should give me a hazmat suit.
Those creepy aliens who abduct people and shove probes up their asses? They are actually just doing cutting-edge research for what will become the future of retail.
And let me just say, I, for one, welcome our new alien-engineered, pulse and temperature-measuring shopping-cart overlords.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Now Walmart will know where to position the fainting couches when shoppers get sticker shock, or see how long the lines are at the registers. I presume their legal derpment said it'd add no additional liability. The stores are always so understaffed I doubt anyone will be dispatched if anomalies are found, these things are going to have false positives all the time (like when they're wet from rain/snow, or a kid is in the cart). This is pure PR to send shoppers the message that they're safer at Walmart.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
They attached it to a shopping cart for the purpose of monitoring you, not for your own information. Stop being a moron.
Now they'll be able to tell which items are stressed over obtaining and jack the prices on basic necessities.
To boost the sale of gloves.
These temperature and pulse monitors will have to be battery powered. Now the Wal-Mart employees have to plug in the regular shopping cars as well as the scooters for the disabled. Also, how long do you suppose these batteries last going from a 65 degree store to -20 degree parking lot (for hours) during the winter?
Sure, they patent it, but I don't think they will IMPLEMENT it.
Now they will at least have accurate data on the low-key incoherent rage that bubbles forth every time a shopper goes up to the twenty checkout lines, only one of which is ever staffed.
go tho the gym. every piece of equipment there has a handle bar set of sensors doing just that... bikes, tread mills, rowing machines, stair climbers, and on and on I go!
A patent - an limited monopoly on an idea - can read my pulse and temperature? Wow, colour me impressed!
(In other news I'm off to buy some gloves - ideally chain mail with some sort of grip enhancement so the reading is "ironman has entered the shop").
One of the dumb pstents. What innovation is there? What new technology? Just a recombination of existing ones so that some money would become extractable from similar ideas other kids would come up with as well. Should be denied without hesitation.
"PHB Bullshit" ... and took the fee anyhow.
Table-ized A.I.
They have nothing on people with dollars in their eyes. Walmart just turned their stores into polygraphs that will monitor their customers physical response to advertising. Bravo. Even the Soviet Union couldn't find a way to pry out people's thoughts.
Nothing in this patent is new, nor the methods of integration any different to products already on the market which do the same thing, albeit without "Shopping cart ID" as the pivot point.
Aside from that, collecting data like this is just one step away from fingerprint scanning to determining the customer for realsies. Not that it would be hard to recognise people with enough heartbeats, pressure grips, movement patterns etc. Any 2 of these can determine the person with a high degree of accuracy these days. Maybe even one is all that is needed with enough data.
Not that it matters almost, anymore. We have to pay for our plastic bags now and with Uber Eats, why go to the market anyways?
Walmart can't even keep low-tech carts maintained correctly. You think they're going to be able to maintain high-tech carts?
At my store, they ruin the cart wheels almost by dragging the line of carts sideways when they're retrieving the carts from the cart return corrals. This makes most of the carts pull to one side, but the worst ones make a ka-chunk ka-chunk noise because dragging the cart sideways created a flat spot on the wheel.
They'll use it so they can correlate any perceived interest in a particular product and then manipulate things to try and get you to buy it.
"Hey, his heart rate and BP spiked when he saw the Chocolate Blammo cereal boxes on aisle 4, but he didn't grab any. Quick, send a text to his phone with a 10% off coupon for Chocolate Blammo."
Don't think for a moment that this isn't the ultimate goal of this "helpful" monitoring. I mean really, do you think Safeway or Kroger gives a shit about your blood oxygen level or heart rate except to use it to sell you more shit?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Sounds like Liability issues lets say some has an hart attract and wallmart does nothing.
Does pushing the shopping cart make your pulse go up a little?
Here's what I want: I want a meter that you can put near a shopping cart (or a table, door handle, etc), and the meter would tell you if the shopping cart had something contagious on it, like a flu virus.
but you guys do not seem to care much about that.
Essentially its a fitbit on a cart. That's an obvious application of prior art. I call BS.
and that's what those f*ers came up with. Gotta show the board their worth and now they get to call themselves "inventors".
The odds of their target demographic having a heart attack in the store are pretty high. They're just trying to avoid in store heart attacks.
I don't want my shopping cart to monitor me
Hmmm. Capturing biometric data to pair with exposure to various in-store simuli, retail displays, signage, check out lines etc. All in the guise of giving you some run-of-the-mill fitness feedback.
Because that is not creepy at all.
We will call it... wait for it.... Well Cart!
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
"these alerts could warn associates when several shoppers need help " ... so they'll know that its time to take their lunch break.
My BIO information is MY intellectual property and anybody that tries to read it without my explicit written permission is agreeing to pay me Ten Million U.S. Dollars payable on demand.
A carriage provided by a huge retail corporation that monitors the health and needs of the customer? This seems familiar...
Oh yeah, it's version 0.01 of the Wall-E Hoverchair.
Just as 1984 was never intended as an instruction manual for politicians, so neither was Wall-E for corporations. Neither are futures I want to live in.
Just need some way of pushing the cart without communicating any biometrics. Maybe a really well-insulated glove.
"Call Security, the customer walking down aisle nine appears to be a zombie. He has no vital signs."
captcha: organs
Alert store associates. We have a possible heart attack in aisle 3. Reported individual is clogging the aisle due to their weight and breathing heavy.
Update to Store associates. Possible heart attack has been downgraded to possible orgasm over the our fine selections of sugar products.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Most of the trip went well. But I could feel my heart rate rise and palms getting sweaty as I went to my last stop. As I grabbed for the item my heart rate peaked. Ya, you guessed it. No woman is getting knocked up tonight!
I think it'd be more beneficial to put heart rate monitors and temperature probes on the store greeters to make sure they're still alive. Then, when they do die, they can quickly be replaced before any one notices.
Checks each shopper for the percentage of lycra worn vs body mass. Have too much of each, you're banned in the interests of public health
The abstract and title of a patent are not the claims of the patent. Just because the abstract or title do no include every constraint does not mean that the inventors are making claims without constraints.
It seems that half my local Walmart's carts end up in the river? and another 25% are being used as moving vans for homeless people.
I wonder how much these fancy carts might cost.
... to always carry a stun gun at Walmart.
"Your BMI of 32.5 is looking a little low. Why not head over to aisle 14 where you can find all the sugar-laden, empty calorie shit foods you know you want."
Your sig here!
When is everyone going to get sick and tired enough of everything you do being surveiled tracked and logged that you finally say 'enough is enough'?
Also I'm so glad I never shop at Walmart.
Like I posted in the Alexa article earlier...
#WalkAwayFromTheseOrwellianFuckers
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Those creepy aliens who abduct people and shove probes up their asses? They are actually just doing cutting-edge research for what will become the future of retail.
And let me just say, I, for one, welcome our new alien-engineered, pulse and temperature-measuring shopping-cart overlords.
I've always wondered- what if most species in the galaxy speak from out of their rear end? Or if most species have their brains in their butts?
Aliens might just be sticking a voice recorder up there hoping you'll talk... or trying to do a brainscan to see if they find any intelligence. They must be really confused doing a brain scan and finding nothing but poop...
(Conversation translated into English from an alien language:)
"Lord Captain Qrellxys, we have completed the scans of the dominant lifeforms of Planet 347-T8. They are shaped like us, but where we have our excretory organs, they have strange, soft, squishy, pink, crenulated lumps of flesh. We are unsure what the functions of these organs are."
"Odd, Bio-Researcher First Class Dwnaurvf. Tell me... do they have brains like ours, centrally located between our sensory bulbs and our feet?"
"No, Lord Captian. These humans... my Bio-Researchers have scanned every one the subjects passed to them by the Collection Team... and it has been concluded that they all have shit for brains. Every last one."
"Explains a lot."
"We have reached the identical conclusion, Lord Captain."
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
They already have lots of cart stolen, imagine the attraction of a cart containing all this technology!
Try it! Library of Babel
Step 2. Profit
Or whatever
Does it also scan your finger printz? Oh man I should totally patent that! A shopping cart that scans finger prints to id shoppers.
And eye retina scanners at the end of ales to identify people.
And at the checkout to id cash pays
And to link cc payments to people
Go me!!! I'll be rich!