ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,412,148, issued on Sept. 9, was assigned to Maplebear Inc. (San Francisco).
"Cart-based availability determination for an online concierge system" was invented by Lin Gao (Miami), Yilin Huang (Shanghai), Shiyuan Yang (Shanghai), Hao Wu (Shanghai), Ganglu Wu (Shanghai) and Xiao Zhou (Shanghai).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An online concierge system may use images received from shopping carts within retailers to determine the availability of items within those retailers. A shopping cart includes externally-facing cameras that automatically capture images of the area around the shopping cart as the shopping cart travels through a retailer...