Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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RO/RO Shopping Cart

Faster De- / Re- Carting at checkout
  (+14, -1)(+14, -1)
(+14, -1)
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The bottom of this cart is an unpowered conveyor belt. When you get ready to check out, the cart clicks into place at the checkout lane and the front end swings out of the way.

A power take-off from the lane starts the bottom of the cart moving, sliding all of your groceries directly onto the check-out belt. Once it has advanced a little more than one cart length, the takeoff disengages and beeps, allowing you to push the cart through the lane as normal. Once there you click it back in to accept the filled bags.

MechE, Feb 15 2012

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       Surprisingly enough I am, I just blanked on any clever presentation for this one.   

       Also, this was an example of why I generally re-typed college papers from scratch so I could rework it to mean what I intended. Oh well. Cleaned up a little bit.
MechE, Feb 15 2012
  

       I like this. Like a mini dump truck. (Yeah, sober up the idea, and the rest will fall into place.)
blissmiss, Feb 15 2012
  

       Oh, so not a reverse osmosis cart then. Okay.
normzone, Feb 15 2012
  

       As long as you have a matching power take off in the boot of your car. Also a conveyor at home that runs from the car to the kitchen cupboard.
pocmloc, Feb 15 2012
  

       In general, it's a good idea, except for people like me who jam everything into the upper part (child seat)!
Also, what about people who fill their carts to the top? I would think the items might topple over whilst unloading...possibly there could be some kind of filing row that the items slid into first.
xandram, Feb 15 2012
  

       Who wants a Read-Only shopping cart?
phundug, Feb 15 2012
  

       RO/RO = roll-on/roll-off   

       This is inspired. Build it. Make a gazillion bucks. The consumers of the world will thank you.
Alterother, Feb 16 2012
  

       It doesn't have to be the same cart. One cart can be offloaded while a waiting cart is filled. After the filled cart is taken away the previous cart can slide under the conveyor and take its place. Grocery bags that are of the same size and interlock will help a lot.   

       At least until robots are doing the bag loading for us.
Voice, Feb 20 2012
  

       Wot no Trebuchet ?
8th of 7, Feb 20 2012
  

       Why offload from the cart at all? It should tag everything placed inside it somehow, you give it your account number from your phone, and so you just roll out of the store right from the shelf.   

       Produce might be a little difficult to work in this way.
RayfordSteele, Nov 19 2014
  
      
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