CN-122029586-A - Energy-saving radio frequency and vision fusion for electronic shelf label system

Abstract

The present disclosure provides systems, methods, and devices for an Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) system for supporting indoor positioning of user devices. In a first aspect, a method of communicating in an ESL system includes determining a plurality of candidate locations of a user device within an indoor environment based on location information received for the user device, receiving visual information for the user device from one or more cameras, determining a subset of the plurality of candidate locations that satisfy a criterion based on a comparison of the location information for each of the plurality of candidate locations and the visual information, and determining a location of the user device within the indoor environment based on the subset of the plurality of candidate locations. Other aspects and features are also claimed and described.

Inventors

• M. Angelicnoski
• S. Akalakalan
• V. A. Reddy
• A. Manolacos

Assignees

• 高通股份有限公司

Dates

Publication Date

20260512

Application Date

20240911

Priority Date

20230927

Claims (20)

1. 1. A method, the method comprising: Determining a plurality of candidate locations of a user device within an indoor environment based on location information received for the user device; Receiving visual information for the user device from one or more cameras, each of the one or more cameras having a field of view including at least one candidate position fix of the plurality of candidate positions; determining a subset of the plurality of candidate locations meeting a criterion based on a comparison of location information for each of the plurality of candidate locations and the visual information, and A location of the user device within the indoor environment is determined based on the subset of the plurality of candidate locations.
2. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the plurality of candidate locations comprises: Receiving the location information from the user device, the location information comprising Radio Frequency (RF) measurements of beacon signals received by the user device from a plurality of Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) devices; determining ambiguity of the location of the user equipment based on the received location information, and Each candidate position fix of the plurality of candidate position fixes is determined based on a corresponding subset of the position fix information in response to the ambiguity.
3. 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the user device is a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) enabled mobile device, and wherein the plurality of ESL devices comprise BLE radio components that transmit the beacon signals measured by the user device.
4. 4. The method of claim 3, wherein the plurality of ESL devices transmit the beacon signal according to a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) scheme.
5. 5. The method of claim 4, wherein prior to determining the plurality of candidate locations, the method further comprises sending instructions to the plurality of ESL devices via a network for the plurality of ESL devices to increase the periodicity of the beacon signals sent over time.
6. 6. The method of claim 2, wherein determining the ambiguity comprises: determining a reliability measure for the positioning information; determining whether the reliability measure meets a minimum reliability threshold, and The ambiguity is determined when the reliability measure is determined not to meet the minimum reliability threshold.
7. 7. The method of claim 2, wherein the environment is a retail floor space, and wherein the plurality of ESL devices are attached to shelves on merchandise display stands located within the retail floor space.
8. 8. The method of claim 7, wherein each of the merchandise display stands includes one or more shelf cameras, and wherein the visual information includes images captured by one or more shelf cameras attached to at least one of the merchandise display stands located proximate the positioning of the user device.
9. 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the visual information further comprises additional images captured by one or more overhead cameras associated with a security monitoring system of the retail floor space.
10. 10. The method of claim 9, wherein the one or more overhead cameras are associated with legacy monitoring systems deployed within the indoor environment.
11. 11. An apparatus, the apparatus comprising: A memory storing processor readable code, and At least one processor coupled to the memory, the at least one processor configured to execute the processor-readable code to cause the at least one processor to perform operations comprising: Determining a plurality of candidate locations of a user device within an indoor environment based on location information received for the user device; Receiving visual information for the user device from one or more cameras, each of the one or more cameras having a field of view including at least one candidate position fix of the plurality of candidate positions; determining a subset of the plurality of candidate locations meeting a criterion based on a comparison of location information for each of the plurality of candidate locations and the visual information, and A location of the user device within the indoor environment is determined based on the subset of the plurality of candidate locations.
12. 12. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the operations further comprise: Receiving the location information from the user device, the location information comprising Radio Frequency (RF) measurements of beacon signals received by the user device from a plurality of Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) devices; determining ambiguity of the location of the user equipment based on the received location information, and Each candidate position fix of the plurality of candidate position fixes is determined based on a corresponding subset of the position fix information in response to the ambiguity.
13. 13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the user device is a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) enabled mobile device, and wherein the plurality of ESL devices comprise BLE radio components that transmit the beacon signals measured by the user device.
14. 14. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the plurality of ESL devices transmit the beacon signal according to a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) scheme.
15. 15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise transmitting instructions to the plurality of ESL devices via a network for the plurality of ESL devices to increase the periodicity of the beacon signals transmitted over time.
16. 16. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise: determining a reliability measure for the positioning information; determining whether the reliability measure meets a minimum reliability threshold, and The ambiguity is determined when the reliability measure is determined not to meet the minimum reliability threshold.
17. 17. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the environment is a retail floor space, and wherein the plurality of ESL devices are attached to shelves on merchandise display stands located within the retail floor space.
18. 18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein each of the merchandise display stands includes one or more shelf cameras, and wherein the visual information includes images captured by one or more shelf cameras attached to at least one of the merchandise display stands located proximate the location of the user device.
19. 19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the visual information further comprises additional images captured by one or more overhead cameras associated with a security monitoring system of the retail floor space.
20. 20. The device of claim 19, wherein the one or more overhead cameras are associated with legacy monitoring systems deployed within the indoor environment.

Description

Energy-saving radio frequency and vision fusion for electronic shelf label system Cross Reference to Related Applications The present application claims the benefit of greek patent application No. 20230100766, entitled "ENERGY-saving radio frequency and visual fusion for electronic shelf label systems," filed on day 2023, month 9, and 27, and the benefit of greek patent application No. 20230100737, entitled "ENERGY-saving radio frequency and visual fusion for electronic shelf label systems," filed on day 2023, month 9, and 14, both of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. Technical Field Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) systems, and more particularly, to methods and systems for indoor positioning of user devices in ESL systems. Background Typically, retailers use paper labels to display information about the products displayed on the shelves, such as price, discount rate, unit cost, place of origin, and so forth. Price display using such paper labels has limitations. For example, when product information or location changes on a shelf occur, retailers must create new paper labels and discard old paper labels. This increases maintenance costs for both supply and employee labor. Furthermore, from an environmental point of view, changing the label wastes raw materials such as paper, which has an adverse effect on environmental protection. Still further, people are prone to making mistakes, such as mislabeling shelves or products or forgetting to make temporary price changes on certain shelves, which can lead to frustration for shoppers. Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) devices are electronic devices for displaying prices or other related information of items on a retail shelf, which may be used in place of paper labels. The ESL device may be attached to the front edge of a retail shelf and display a variety of information using a display device such as a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). The ESL device may be programmed with new product information whenever information about the product or the location of the product changes. Therefore, the same electronic shelf label can be reused. The ESL device may be equipped with a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio that may be used for indoor positioning applications, such as tracking the location of BLE-enabled devices. While providing very accurate performance for locating nearby BLE devices, ESL systems introduce unique location-related challenges for BLE devices within a retail environment, in part because they deploy ESL-BLE radio components in large-scale, dense, with overlapping signals across multiple racks and shelves within the environment. Disclosure of Invention The following presents some aspects of the disclosure in order to provide a basic understanding of the discussed technology. This summary is not an extensive overview of all contemplated features of the disclosure, and is intended to neither identify key or critical elements of all aspects of the disclosure nor delineate the scope of any or all aspects of the disclosure. The sole purpose of this summary is to present some concepts of one or more aspects of the disclosure in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description that is presented later. Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) devices may be used in wireless networks to provide information and services to shoppers and retailers (as users of ESL systems). For example, an ESL device operating on a wireless network as part of an ESL system may support an indoor location service to identify the location of the ESL device within an environment (e.g., floor space of a retail store). As another example, the ESL system may support a location service to identify a user's location within an environment by interacting with the user's mobile device. As yet another example, the ESL system may use positioning ambiguity resolution or reduction (PARR) to resolve or reduce any ambiguity or inconsistency detected with respect to the positioning of the user device within the environment. The disclosed PARR techniques may combine Radio Frequency (RF) measurements with visual Channel State Information (CSI) obtained from cameras deployed with ESL systems to overcome positioning-related challenges associated with large-scale dense deployment of ESL devices within a retail environment. In one aspect of the disclosure, a method includes determining a plurality of candidate locations of a user device within an indoor environment based on location information received for the user device, receiving visual information for the user device from one or more cameras, each of the one or more cameras having a field of view including at least one of the plurality of candidate locations, determining a subset of the plurality of candidate locations that satisfy a criterion based on a comparison of the location information and the visual information for each of the plurality of candidate locations, and