As a final effort to get rid of the problem of a congested super market; instead of a irregular rectangular cart with two casters and two fixed wheels, use a deeper square cart with four casters. This would allow greater control and maneuverability in aisles, and though having a square frame means stacking foods, this can be fixed by making the eniter thing a series of shelves on posts positioned in a square. It's like a refrigerator, without the refrigeration...and it has wheels and is square.
-- jellydoughnut, Feb 11 2008

Portable shelving rather than a cart? Not bad, but people won't want to bend over to store items on lower "shelves", and if you raise the shelves, people won't be able to see where they're going.

How about personal forklifts?
-- phoenix, Feb 11 2008


A square cart won't 'nest' for ease of storage.
Also, 4 casters (nothing to do with the weather) may make stationary maneuvering easier, but I wouldn't say they are easier to control while moving, unless you are an experienced supermarket cart driver. They are more difficult to corner accurately with (or maybe it's just that I drive them way too fast), compared to the standard csaters at the front, fixed at the back style.
-- neutrinos_shadow, Feb 11 2008


Why "holonomic"? [EDIT] I just found out. Thank you for enlarging my vocabulary.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 11 2008


IKEA has square carts with all casters, flat carts with all casters and weird carts just for hanging bags off of. I find the four caster system annoying, harder to handle and requiring two hands to steer. That said, someone must like them as IKEA isn't run by idiots.

I don't understand the shelves on posts idea, but any fixed shelves would be annoying as I'd always be buying the thing that is too big for the shelf and I'd worry if shelf allowed things to roll off.
-- MisterQED, Feb 12 2008


Or the store could play a pattern of "good song-bad song-...etc" over the intercom. A bad song tends to flush out a store, and stores that play bad songs all the time never get any business,,, but a store that plays an oscillating selection of good and bad music will be likely to get customers that come and then leave on que in wave patterns.
-- quantum_flux, Feb 12 2008



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