Project Synopsis

on
Human Following Autonomous Cart
System
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
B.Tech. in Electronics and Communication Engineering
by:

Amber Gupta(1900270310027)
Avni Sharma (1900270310044)
Ayush Saxena (1900270310045)
Dev Joshi (1900270310055)

Under the supervision of

Guid
e:
Mr. Himanshu Nagpal
Assistant Prof., ECE Department, AKGEC

Ajay Kumar Garg Engineering College, Ghaziabad

27th Km Stone, Delhi - Hapur Bypass Road, Adhyatmik Nagar, Ghaziabad-201009
Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow
November, 2022
 DECL
ARATION

We hereby declare that this submission is our own work and that, to the best of our
knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by
another person, nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the
award of any other degree or diploma by the university or other institute of higher
learning, except where due acknowledgement has been made in the text.

Signature: Signature:

Dev Joshi Ayush Saxena

1900270310055 1900270310045

Signature: Signature:

Amber Gupta Avni Sharma

1900270310027 1900270310044
 CERT
IFICATE

This is to certify that Project Report entitled “Human following autonomous cart
system” which is submitted by Amber Gupta, Avni Sharma, Ayush Saxena, Dev Joshi
in the partial fulfillment of requirement for the award of degree of Bachelor of
Technology (Electronics and Communication Engineering) submitted to Dr. A.P.J.
Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow is a record of students’ own work
carried out under my supervision. The matter in this report has not been submitted to
any University or Institution for award of any degree.

Supervisor:

Mr. Himanshu Nagpal

Assistant Prof., ECE Department, AKGEC

Dr. P.K. Chopra

Prof. ECE Dept., AKGEC

Date: 28 Nov 2022

 ABST
RACT

A shopping trolley is a necessary tool for shopping in supermarkets or grocery stores.

However, there are shopping trolleys abandoned everywhere in supermarkets after being
used. In addition, there are also shopping trolley safety issues such as sliding down from an
escalator. It is known to be an inconvenience and time wasting for customers who are in a rush
to search for desired products in a supermarket. Therefore, an automatic human and line
following shopping trolley with a smart shopping system is developed to solve these problems.
A line following a portable robot is installed under the trolley to lead the users to the items’
location that they plan to purchase in the supermarket. This paper presents the hardware and
software design of the portable robot. The result of the testing on the used sensors like
ultrasonic and line sensors are presented. Lastly, the graphical user interface application
during the shopping trolley in operation is explained.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration …………………………………………………………………………………. ii

Certificate…………………………………………………………………………………… iii

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….... iv

Chapter 1. Introduction 7
1.1 Introduction 7

Chapter 2. Literature Survey 8

Chapter 3. Problem Statement 9
3.1 Problem related to traditional carts 9
3.2 Time spent for billing
3.3 Carrying heavy loads 10

Chapter 4. Proposed Methodology 11

4.1 Project Idea 11
4.2 Cart motion and GPS 11
4.3 Cart Working Mechanism 11
4.4 Automated Billing System 12
4.5 Obstacle detection 12-15

Chapter 5. Hardware and Software Required 16

5.1 Hardware Required 16
5.1.1 L298N Motor Driver 16
5.1.2 Geared DC Motor 16
5.1.3 GPS Module 16
5.1.4 Bluetooth Module 16
5.1.5 3-Axis Digital Compass IC HMC5883L 16
 5.1.6 3.7V Li-ion 2000mAh Cells 16
5.1.7 Software Required 17
5.1.8 Arduino IDE 2.0.2 17

Chapter 6. Application and Advantages 18

Chapter 7. Work Done
7.1 Location Detection Using GPS
7.2 Smart Billing System 20

Chapter 8. Future Scope 21

Conclusion 23
References……………………………………………………………………………2
 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Shopping carts in the supermarkets in the day today shopping activities are now mostly
visible. Customers are pushing trolleys around them to carry the items they purchased.
The usual process of traveling the trolley is done manually by the human with the effort
of his/her. Therefore, if a customer carries a baby while shopping it is a real burden to
the customer to push the trolley or to a disabled person with one hand it is almost
impossible to push the trolley. People can see huge rush in supermarkets on holidays
and weekends. The rush is even more when there are special offers and discounts. The
main purpose of the research project was to address the above issues by developing a
multi-functional automated trolley.
Follow Me is an automated trolley that is capable of carrying goods while following the
customer automatically without human effort, an android application has developed
which gives suggestions about goods while purchasing, for this a tablet is fixed to the
trolley with an android platform to function the above-mentioned task. Furthermore, the
trolley is parked back to its slot automatically after the customer finishes his/her
purchases, the trolley will be charged its battery automatically while the trolley is in the
parking slot. Usage of this system will impact on modern day shopping market
customers to do their shopping activities in an easy manner.
Robotic technology has played a vital role in this moving world in the past couple of
years. In this robotic world, it is necessary to make trolleys such as Human following
trolleys which interact and co-exists with them. To perform this task accurately, a
trolley needs to avoid obstacles and also it must be intelligent enough to follow a
person in a crowded area, rich environment and indoor and outdoor places.
 CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE SURVEY

Before starting with the project, we need to know what has been done in the area of
interest. We went through multiple papers in order to get a clear picture of what the
field currently has to offer and how we can improve on it. An automatic following
trolley, this trolley is being guided behind the customer with use of traditional following
techniques. Considering the functional facts that they developed, the research group
developed an automated trolley which follows the customer with the use of an ESP 32
to control the trolley. We came up with the methodology sensors to track the path which
the customer walks. Moreover, the developed research consists of a tablet which is fixed
in front of the trolley to track the goods which the customers have purchased and an
automatic billing system which is developed with the use of an android application.
Furthermore, the trolley to be developed consists of some multifunctional tasks of
automatic parking to the slot and automatic charging while the trolley is being parked.

This trolley has the the technology to track the goods eg. Viewing the product name,
expiry date and the cost, to display the items they have used a mobile application. The
drawback of the system is the trolley does only the functions that are mentioned above.
Thus the trolley is electronic; it does not cover the automatic traveling facility.

Shopping trolleys with smart shopping systems reduce the time of customers and make
their shopping life easier for the customer. This automatic trolley is using Ultrasonic
sensors to identify obstacle avoidance and android application to control.
 CHAPTER 3
PROBLEM STATEMENT

From the observation of the retail and industrial sector, there are a lot of people in India
who are still using manual trolleys to carry heavy things. Most of them are not exposed
to automatic trolley technology for replacing existing tools and improving the quality of
services. Accordingly, these technologies have been established to carry tools that are
too heavy and use a lot of energy to push the trolley . The innovation of automatic
trolleys can evade injury to users because repetitive or sustained awkward posture when
handling trolleys can cause injury . Furthermore, the manual trolley is not user friendly
to pregnant women and disables people. There was an accident involving an
uncontrolled trolley in which one old woman died in China because of that manual
trolley that slid down from an escalator .

3.1 Time spent in lines for billing

 On an average, a customer takes 5-6 minutes to bill an item, get the item bagged,
remove the anti-theft device removed and then pay the bill. Since getting the item
bagged and removal of anti-theft item is mandatory. We can remove the wastage by
eliminating payment of the bill. An application can be created where-in the customer
can scan the QR-code, create the bill and pay the bill from his/her handheld device.
Various payment methods such as mobile wallets or credit/debit cards or net banking
can be provided. The billing counter can then be restricted only for the procedure of
scanning the goods to check whether the payment is done, bag the goods and remove
anti-theft items. A customer spends an average of 2 min out of his 5 min time for
payment. We can reduce this cycle time to 3 min thus slashing the waiting time in the
payment queue by 40%.  This is surely going to enhance the customer experience. 
3.2 Carrying heavy loads

Pushing a heavy cart is a big problem for elders, people with back pain and for
physically challenged beings. This may not be a problem for a healthy person but think
of those not in the pink of health. Nobody should be dependent on others even for
buying basic groceries. Many elders live alone and have to their basic chores
themselves. One of the job is to arrange basic grocery at home but carrying heavy bags
or pushing a cart in a shopping mall is not that easy. Even a person with a wheelchair
can now go for shopping without the worry of dragging the trolley.
 CHAPTER 4
METHODOLOGY

Trolley consists of a robotic vehicle having two wheels and one freewheel mounted
along with different sensors and modules, i.e. ultrasonic sensor and camera.In recent
years, robot technology has developed significantly. Most of the traditional robots are
still commonly used for industrial applications, such as in car assembly factories.
Meanwhile, intelligent robots have become popular in daily life applications. Human-
friendly robots are now used for taking care of the elderly . The purpose of a human
following robot is to improve the relationship between people and the robot . For
instance, the robot can carry heavy loads for people in hospitals, airports and
shopping centers. The robot can provide services to humans as an assistant in different
kinds of situations.

4.2 Cart motion and GPS -

Our Cart is GPS guided. The human operator has to set the coordinates which the
vehicle has to follow. Then the rover traverses the designated path. The Cart is driven
by two DC motors, and we use differential steering to maneuver the rover around.

4.3 Cart Working Mechanism

1. The mobile application provides its location measurements that are transmitted
using bluetooth to the microcontroller.
2. The GPS module on the cart provides its location to the microcontroller.
3. The magnetometer is used to calculate the current heading of the cart and the
angle between the current heading and magnetic north pole.
4. Similarly, the angle between, the line joining the current location of the user and
the cart, and the line joining the cart and magnetic north pole can be calculated.
5. The difference between the angles will provide the new heading.
6. Using the new heading and the distance between user and cart, the cart can be
guided to the location of the user.
7. The Pi camera captures the user initially and keeps comparing it while following
the original user. If it is matched, then it follows that person. Also, it checks for
the obstacles and avoids them by using an ultrasonic sensor.
4.4 Smart Cart Automated Billing Purpose

● The cart is scanning the barcode and using an image processing algorithm to
calculate the bill without involving a human.
● Customers do not need to waste their time staying in long queues to pay the bill.
4.5 Obstacle Detection

Obstacles will be detected by ultrasonic sensors. Waves transmitted from the sensor will
be reflected back to it from the obstacle. The cart will re-route its path if it encounters
an obstacle.
 CHAPTER 5

HARDWARE AND
SOFTWARE REQUIRED

5.1.1 L298N Motor Driver

This dual bidirectional motor driver is based on the very popular L298 Dual H-Bridge
motor driver integrated circuit. The circuit can be used to control two motors with up to
2A current each in both directions. It is ideal for robotic applications and well suited for
connection to microcontrollers, requiring just a couple of control lines per motor. It can
also be interfaced with simple manual switches, TTL logic gates, relays, etc. This board
equipped with power LED indicators, on-board regulator and protection diodes.

5.1.2 Geared DC Motor

Geared DC motors can be defined as an extension of a DC motor which already had its
Insight details demystified here. A geared DC Motor has a gear assembly attached to the
motor. The speed of the motor is counted in terms of rotations of the shaft per minute
and is termed as RPM .The gear assembly helps in increasing the torque and reducing
the speed. Using the correct combination of gears in a gear motor, its speed can be
reduced to any desirable figure. This concept where gears reduce the speed of the
vehicle but increase its torque is known as gear reduction. This insight will explore all
the minor and major details that make the gear head and hence the working of geared
DC motors.
The outer body of the gear head is made of high density plastic but it is quite easy to
open as only screws are used to attach the outer and the inner structure. The major
reason behind this could be to lubricate the gear head from time to time.
The plastic body has a threading through which the nut can be easily mounted and vice
versa from the gear head.

5.1.3 GPS Module

The NEO-6 module series is a family of stand-alone GPS receivers featuring the high
performance u-blox 6 positioning engine. These flexible and cost effective receivers
offer numerous connectivity options in a miniature 16 x 12.2 x 2.4 mm package. Their
compact architecture and power and memory options make NEO-6 modules ideal for
battery operated mobile devices with very strict cost and space constraints. The 50-
channel u-blox 6 positioning engine boasts a Time-To-First-Fix (TTFF) of under 1
second. The dedicated acquisition engine, with 2 million correlators, is capable of
massive parallel time/frequency space searches, enabling it to find satellites instantly.
Innovative design and technology suppresses jamming sources and mitigates multipath
effects, giving NEO-6 GPS receivers excellent navigation performance even in the most
challenging environments.
5.1.4 Bluetooth Module

HC-05 module is an easy to use Bluetooth SPP (Serial Port Protocol) module, designed
for transparent wireless serial connection setup.
Serial port Bluetooth module is fully qualified Bluetooth V2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data
Rate) 3Mbps Modulation with complete 2.4GHz radio transceiver and baseband. It uses
CSR Bluecore 04-External single chip Bluetooth system with CMOS technology and
with AFH(Adaptive Frequency Hopping Feature). It has a footprint as small as
12.7mmx27mm.

5.1.5 3-Axis Digital Compass IC HMC5883L

The Honeywell HMC5883L is a surface-mount, multi-chip module designed for low-

field magnetic sensing with a digital interface for applications such as low-cost
compassing and magnetometry. The HMC5883L includes our state-of-the-art, high-
resolution HMC118X series magneto-resistive sensors plus an ASIC containing
amplification, automatic degaussing strap drivers, offset cancellation, and a 12-bit
ADC that enables 1° to 2° compass heading accuracy. The I2C serial bus allows for
an easy interface. The HMC5883L is a 3.0x3.0x0.9mm surface
mount 16-pin leadless chip carrier (LCC). Applications for the HMC5883L include
Mobile Phones, Netbooks, Consumer Electronics, Auto Navigation Systems, and
Personal Navigation Devices. The HMC5883L utilizes Honeywell’s Anisotropic
Magnetoresistive (AMR) technology that provides advantages over other magnetic
sensor technologies. These anisotropic, directional sensors feature precision in-axis
sensitivity and linearity. These sensors’ solid-state construction with very low cross-
axis sensitivity is designed to measure both the direction and the magnitude of
Earth’s magnetic fields, from milli-gauss to 8 gauss. Honeywell’s Magnetic Sensors
are among the most sensitive and reliable low-field sensors in the industry.
ESP32 is the ESP8266 successor. ESP32 is a single 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi-and-Bluetooth
combo chip designed with the TSMC low-power 40 nm technology. It is designed to
achieve the best power and RF performance, showing robustness, versatility and
reliability in a wide variety of applications and power scenarios.

● Low-cost: you can get an ESP32 starting at $6, which makes it easily accessible
to the general public;
● Low-power: the ESP32 consumes very little power compared with other
microcontrollers, and it supports low-power mode states like deep sleep to save
power;
● Wi-Fi capabilities: the ESP32 can easily connect to a Wi-Fi network to connect
to the internet (station mode), or create its own Wi-Fi wireless network (access
point mode) so other devices can connect to it—this is essential for IoT and
Home Automation projects—you can have multiple devices communicating with
each other using their Wi-Fi capabilities;
● Bluetooth: the ESP32 supports Bluetooth classic and Bluetooth Low Energy
(BLE)—which is useful for a wide variety of IoT applications;
● Dual-core: most ESP32 are dual-core— they come with 2 Xtensa 32-bit LX6
microprocessors: core 0 and core 1.
● Rich peripheral input/output interface—the ESP32 supports a wide variety of
input (read data from the outside world) and output (to send commands/signals to
the outside world) peripherals like capacitive touch, ADCs, DACs, UART, SPI,
I2C, PWM, and much more.
● Compatible with the Arduino “programming language”: those that are already
familiar with programming the Arduino board, you’ll be happy to know that they
can program the ESP32 in the Arduino style.
● Compatible with MicroPython: you can program the ESP32 with MicroPython
firmware, which is a re-implementation of Python 3 targeted for microcontrollers
and embedded systems.
5.1.6 3.7V Li-ion 2000 mAh cells

A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the

reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type
used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also sees significant use
for grid-scale energy storage and military and aerospace applications. Compared to
other rechargeable battery technologies, Li-ion batteries have high energy densities, low
self-discharge, and no memory effect (although a small memory effect reported in LFP
cells has been traced to poorly made cells).

Chemistry, performance, cost and safety characteristics vary across types of lithium-ion
batteries. Most commercial Li-ion cells use intercalation compounds as the active
materials. The anode or negative electrode is usually graphite, although silicon-carbon
is also being increasingly used. Cells can be manufactured to prioritize either energy or
power density.

5.2 Software Required

5.2.1 Arduino IDE 2.0.2

On September 14, 2022, the Arduino IDE 2.0 was officially released as stable.
Previously, on October 18, 2019 the initial alpha preview was released as the Arduino
Pro IDE. On March 1, 2021, the beta preview was released, renamed IDE 2.0. The
system still uses Arduino CLI (Command Line Interface), but improvements include a
more professional development environment, autocompletion support, and Git
integration. The application frontend is based on the Eclipse Theia Open Source IDE.
The main features available in the new release are:

● Modern, fully featured development environment

● Dual Mode, Classic Mode (identical to the Classic Arduino IDE) and Pro Mode
(File System view)
● New Board Manager
● New Library Manager
● Board List
● Basic Auto-Completion (Arm targets only)
● Git Integration
● Serial Monitor
● Dark Mode
 CHAPTER 6
ADVANTAGES AND APPLICATIONS

● Smart shopping trolleys are an innovative solution that makes life easier.

● The smart trolley system is mainly aimed at providing easy management at the
airports, railway stations and places where people find it difficult to carry or tow
their trolleys.

● Luggage misplacement can be avoided.

● Smartphones control the cart which makes it more compatible and user friendly.

● There are many interesting applications in the vast robotic world in different
fields like military or medical.
 CHAPTER 7.
WORK DONE

7.1 Location Detection Using GPS

Here, the GPS module detects the precise location of the user and as soon as a change in
location is detected the cart automatically changes its heading and moves towards the
new location of the user.

7.2 Smart Billing System

The billing process will be automated by identifying the items being put in the cart by
scanning the barcode of the product being put in the cart.
Smart billing system is helpful for avoiding the long queue at the checkout and saving
the time as well as human resource.
 CHAPTER 8.
FUTURE SCOPE

Recommendations to those who are willing to develop this system further are as follows:
● Setting up a navigation map to the application to identify where the products are
being stored.
● Promoting the application to customer owned mobile devices.
● Sending SMS or E-Mail after the purchase is finished.
● Add a payment method which is fixed to the trolley to pay using customers debit
or credit card.
● Developing a tag which uniquely identifies only the specific customer. As the
research was limited to a specific time period the group was able to focus only a
limited amount of components.

In the future the group is willing to do more research and develop more methods that will be
included to the hardware device as well as to the android application.
 CONCLUSION

A successful implementation of a human following cart is illustrated in this research.

This cart does not only have the detection capability but also the tracking and following
ability as well. The tracking is basically performed on the GPS location and the human
is followed on the basis of that detection. It was also kept in mind that the following
capability of the cart should be as efficient as possible. The tests were performed on the
different conditions to pinpoint the mistakes in the algorithm and correct them. The
different sensors that were integrated with the robot added an additional advantage.
The main motivation of choosing this project was to decrease the tedious work to carry
items and to assist disable and elderly people while shopping in the market. Everything
today is on the verge of being automated, keeping this in mind it helped in arriving at a
conclusion of building an autonomous human following cart.
 REFERENCES

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[3]. Christian Hernandez, Raciel Poot, Lizzie Narvaez, Erica Llanes, Victor Chi, Design
and Implementation of a System for Wireless Control of a Robot Published in
International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI), 2010
[4]. Akshay Chalke, Ashwini Bhor, Pradnya Bhoite, Uddhav Jadhav, Follower robotic
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Dilshan Dhammearatchi, Follow Me Multifunctional Automated Trolley, published in
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT) Vol. 6 Issue 07,
July – 2017