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Design and Implementation of an Android Application for Smart Shopping

Conference Paper · April 2019

DOI: 10.1109/ICCSP.2019.8698109

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 International Conference on Communication and Signal Processing, April 4-6, 2019, India

Design and Implementation of an Android

Application for Smart Shopping
Rajesh Kannan Megalingam, Souraj Vishnu, Swathi Sekhar, Vishnu Sasikumar, Sreekumar S and
Thejus R Nair

Abstract—The growth of Android applications around the
world is extraordinary. People turn towards technology for
making their life more innovative and find solutions to their
daily problems. When it comes to shopping, customers find it
very difficult to find their products around the supermarket as
well as to stand in long billing counter queues. Here we have
come up with an android application which can be used in smart
shopping carts that solve these dilemmas and provide a better
shopping experience. Our smart app consists of two parts which
mainly focuses on navigation to the item’s location and
automatic billing of the products that the user has purchased.
The building environment of the app is the open source software
called Android Studio software. An RFID reader is used to scan
the products. This paper discusses the design and
implementation of the app and the results thus obtained.
Index Terms—Android App, Smart Shopping, Android
Studio, RFID, Shopping Carts.
I. INTRODUCTION
Hence its all the more necessary to develop better and more
sophisticated android applications in order to take India to the
next level in shopping.
The app is build using the Android Studio software which
is the official Google IDE for Android development. It is an
open source software thus increasing cost efficiency, and
provides various tools for app development on every android
device possible. The main advantage of this software is the
availability of the real-time platform called emulator tool to
test our app. Apart from that, the app can also be tested on
smartphones through USB debugging. Our app consists of
two sections: Navigation and Billing System. Navigation
primarily focuses on controlling the movement and
orientation of the cart. This is useful for customers who are
unable to locate their products in a huge crowded
supermarket. The app provides the user with a manual mode

I
and a fixed mode. The manual mode contains buttons that the
NDIA is among the largest marketing hub in the world.
user can utilize to manually navigate an automatic shopping
The production, as well as consumption in India, has
cart. The fixed mode is a bit more complex and is more
increased drastically over the past few decades and it’s very
preferred by customers since it contains a map which shows
important that we provide consumers with the best
all the fixed positions of the items available in the
experience. When it comes to shopping, people find it rather
supermarket. Customers have to tap on these fixed positions
difficult and tiring to locate the products they wish to buy.
in the app in order to move the automatic shopping cart to the
Long and crowded billing counters make shopping a time-
desired location. The billing system mainly focuses on
consuming task. With the advancement in technology, mobile
automatically updating the list and amount of the products
devices are not just tools for making calls or sending a
purchased by the user. This is achieved by fixing an RFID
message. They have become our communication hub,
scanner in the shopping cart which can read the tag number
entertainment portal, our wallet and the gateway to real-time
of the products and scan the items into the app. The Android
information designed to our needs. This was possible only
application can be used with electronic shopping carts with
through the development in android which resulted in
onboard sensors and navigation capabilities.The rest of this
numerous inventions in the mobile world that gave birth to
paper Section II describes the Motivation of the work. Related
the powerful mobile devices that we use today. Around 650
work is explained in the Section III. System Architecture is
million people use mobile phones in India of which 300
explained in the Section IV. Implementation and results are
million are smartphone users. This has led India in becoming
discussed in the Section V and VI. Conclusion are explained
a bigger producer than the U.S and is only second to China.
in Section VII and finally gives future work in Section VIII.

II. MOTIVATION
As technology evolves, so does the human race. The
adoption of android applications in our daily lives has saved
Rajesh Kannan Megalingam, Souraj Vishnu, Swathi Sekhar, Vishnu us a lot of time and effort. When we take a survey, people
Sasikumar, Sreekumar S and Thejus R Nair are with the Department of
Electronics and Communication Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, doing outdoor shopping is declining at a rapid pace as
Amritapuri, Kerala, India. (e-mail: rajeshkannanieee.org, compared to online shopping mainly because of the painless
sourajvishnup@gmail.com,swathi2596@gmail.com,vishnusasikumarpp@gmail. and time-saving advantage of the later. Although there has
com,sksreekumar94@gmail.com and thejusnair@gmail.com)

978-1-5386-7595-3/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE 0470

been adoption of technologies to change this scenario, smart application to the wheelchair. Paper [9] presents the
applications to turn the supermarket experience to an implementation of an android app which functions as an user
effortless process is still a dream in the industry. This interface to control the movement of a pole climbing robot. In
motivated us to discover an innovative smart app which [10] the authors have given a detailed comparison on various
reduces the energy invested in pushing heavy supermarket platforms for android development. The platforms that have
carts and aids the user to find the products easily. This will been reviewed are JAVA ME, .NET CF, Flash Lite, and
motivate more people to come back towards the supermarket Android. Various parameters like run time memory
experience that is rapidly declining. Another major drawback requirement, device support, User Interface support,
of the existing shopping systems is the use of barcode development languages, deployment methods etc. are
scanning where communication is based on the line of sight evaluated for these platforms. In the paper, [11] authors
propaganda. With our efficient billing system using RFID, identified the design requirements of a smart shopping cart
customers don’t have to stand in billing queues for long which uses RFID readers and tags for the total price
hours. We have come up with a solution where the total calculation. The RFID reader enables the user to pay the bill
amount to be paid by the customers is displayed in the app. using the cart itself and thus avoids the tiring billing queues.
The entire setup was made and they have also designed secure
III. RELATED WORKS communication protocol to make the system more secure. A
In research [1], the authors have developed an android system capable of visualizing the data generated by biosensors
application that can help the shoppers in searching for items for monitoring ICU patients is described in [12]. Roving’s
in the store. the application has two screens corresponding to Bluetooth module RN-42 is used to transmit the data from the
searching and map. The user can type in the products in the sensors to the android device. The android interface is
search bar. A centralized server returns available results for programmed to reduce the noise in order to make the
the search. On selecting the preferred search result, the map readings clearer. In the paper [13]
screen displays the location of the chosen item on the floor
plan of the store. in [2], we see how the authors have built an IV. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
android application for an educational institute. The software The paper mainly focuses on the software development.
android studio is used to develop the application. Android The block diagram of the android app is as depicted in Fig. 1.
Studio has a large number of diverse views available for the The app functions to establish a connection between the user
development of the application. Some of the common views and the smart carts. This communication is depicted in the
are button, scroll view, list view, checkbox, search view etc. A simple diagram shown in Fig. 2. The app can be connected to
layout editor that supports drag and drop of components the cart using the Bluetooth module HC-05 which is designed
makes the app more user-friendly. The research paper [3] to work in a Master Slave configuration thus making it
describes a bookstore management application which is used superior for serial wireless connection.
to administrate the transaction of books. Users have to
register and make an account during the first time login. A
mobile application to evaluate English pronunciation skills is
reported in research work [4]. In this app, the user is provided
with random English words which are fetched from the
SQLite Database. The user has to pronounce the words. The
system compares the received input with the database and
notifies whether the pronunciation is correct or incorrect. In
paper [5] the authors have developed an android application
which can track the nutritional consumption of the users. The
application was developed using Android Studio. The app can
provide tips to the user for improving his/her diet. In the
research paper [6] the authors have introduced a location-
based application for shopping assistance. The users can
Fig.1. System Architecture
search for nearby shops where a particular product is
available. The location of the user is determined by the GPS
(global positioning system) system of the mobile phone. In [7]
an Android application for controlling a robot is discussed.
The application is used to achieve the movement of the robot.
A Bluetooth module along with 8051 microcontroller is used
to receive data from the smartphone. In research [8] the
authors introduce a wheelchair controlled by an android
application. The application acts as a wireless control system
for the wheelchair. The application is developed using the
Fig. 2. Communication Flow diagram
tool MIT app inventor. Bluetooth is used to connect the

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A. Design
The design of the layout of the app is discussed in this
section. Emphasis is given on the functionality of the app and
not on creating an elaborative design. The android
application is coded in Java and will run on all smartphones
that have an android operating system. The app has different
pages each having a specific purpose. The app can be
connected to the smart cart using Bluetooth. On opening the
app, a dialog box will appear to allow permissions for the app
to access Bluetooth of the mobile as shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Dialog Box Seeking Bluetooth Permission
If the user selects the allow button, then the Bluetooth of
the mobile is enabled and a toast message is shown indicating
that the Bluetooth is ON. Whereas if the Bluetooth of the
device is ON prior to the opening of the app, then the dialog
box will not pop-up. In this case, a toast indicating that the
Bluetooth is ON will be displayed as shown in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. Toast Indicating That Bluetooth Is Enabled
The first page lets the user connect the app to the shopping
cart. On clicking the connect button, a dialog box appears
which shows the progress in forming a connection. In the
background, the application tries to establish a connection
with the Bluetooth present in the cart. The HC-05 Bluetooth
module is used as the bluetooth of the shopping cart. This
module has an operating voltage of 5V and a operating
current of 30mA. The module has a maximum range of
100m. An appropriate toast message indicating the status of
the connection is shown after a while. If the connection is
successful, the second page is reached but if the connection
fails then an error message is shown. The layout of the first
page is shown in Fig. 5. The second page forms a central
location of the app. From this page, the user can choose
different options like navigation, billing, map, status etc.
There are buttons for each of these options.
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Fig. 5. Layout Of The First Page
This is depicted in Fig. 6. The map consists of the layout of
the supermarket. This helps the users to easily locate items in
the store. Since the position at which different components
are kept could change from time to time, the map should be
updated regularly. So the app was given access to internet
connection. The app fetches the map from a website whose
url is provided to the app.
The website to be used to fetch the map could be an open
source image hosting website. The status page shows various
information regarding the app. Additionally, it provides the
user an opportunity to give feedback and share shopping
experiences. This helps the developers to improve the
functionalities of the app. Similarly, it enables businesses to
analyze and evaluate customer satisfaction. On clicking the
navigation button, the user is taken to a page which shows
two options that the user can choose from. They are named as
‘manual’ and ‘fixed’. Each of these buttons leads to different
pages. These form the control section where the app directs
the movement of the cart. the manual page contains five
buttons namely front, back, left, right, stop as shown in Fig.
7.
On pressing these buttons, the cart can be moved in
corresponding directions. This feature helps window shoppers
who prefer to browse through the aisles and examine the
merchandise without an intent to buy. Apart from that, the
manual mode helps in debugging of the cart.
The ‘fixed’ section consists of the map of the store where
each section is numbered. The user can choose any number as
per his/her choice from a drop-down menu. On choosing the
desired destination, the application sends a message
containing information about the chosen location to the cart
and the cart can move to that destination based on this data.
The map is present as an image and it is accessed from the
internet. Once the user clicks the Billing System button, the
user is provided with the window which contains a list onto
which the products are added. This window is aided by an
RFID (radio-frequency identification) reader and Arduino.
The function of the Arduino software is to read and write the
data that we wish to load in the app. Thus the name and price
of the items are added and once the customers scan the
products using the reader the data is received automatically.
The android app consists of a textView onto which the tag
number is loaded; a button which is used to add the items to
the list and a ListView which contains the items that the user
purchased as shown in Fig. 8.

Fig. 6. layout of the second page Fig. 7. layout of the ‘manual’ page
V. IMPLEMENTATION
The application consists of various activities aiding in
navigation and product scanning. Each activity can be
understood as a single page in the app. These activities are
Java classes. The layout of a screen is described in the activity
called XML file. In this app, only linear layout is used. In the
first page, the user is asked to connect the device to the
shopping cart. On pressing the ‘connect’ button the
application checks for nearby devices whose Bluetooth is
enabled. On finding a suitable shopping cart, the devices get
paired to it and the connection is established. This page has
two imageView which hold the logo of the institute. The
‘connect’ button also serves the purpose of opening the next
page in the app. The second page consists of four buttons
each serving the purpose of navigating to different pages
based on user preference. It is important that each button
occupy a fixed position in the screen irrespective of screen
sizes. This is ensured by providing horizontal and vertical
layouts and giving constraints to the buttons to these
guidelines as shown in Fig. 9. Each button is provided with a
unique id to differentiate it from other buttons. The buttons in
‘manual’ control page are programmed to send data streams
to the shopping cart via Bluetooth. Each button sends a
different set of data. Based on the received data, the
microcontroller can process the signals and facilitate
movement of the cart. A spinner is used to obtain the drop-
down menu in the android studio. The values in the spinner
can be added to strings.xml file and later referenced in the
java file of the activity. TextView is used to display texts. In
order to access the map, an imageView is first placed into the
layout and the url is referenced through the Picasso extension
available for android studio. The xml file for the ‘fixed’ page
is displayed in Fig. 10.
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Fig. 8. layout of the ‘billing’ page
Fig. 9. Layout with guideline Fig.10. Layout with an ImageView
The JAVA file contains the main code that is written for
the working of the app. It contains the UUID (Universally
Unique Identifier) that is used to connect the smart cart with
the app and the UID (Unique Identification Number) of the
items that are scanned. The UID is the data that is received to
the app as InputStream. This InputStream is sent from the tag
via Bluetooth module and the data appears in the application.
VI. RESULTS
The application was tested on emulator and smartphones.
In both cases, the app performed efficiently with no errors.
The application did not crash at any point in time. The app
was able to control the smart shopping cart without any
delays. Based on the commands received from the
smartphone, the shopping cart was able to move in the
preferred directions. Similarly, in the case of RFID scanning
activity, the app could correctly scan the RFID tag from the
product and identify the product being scanned. it was able to
calculate the total bill to be paid by the user at the end of
shopping.
While examining the working of the app, it was found that
there is 100% success rate in each direction of the motion
control. To prove this, the app was tested in several mobile
devices and we obtained the overall response time for the
motion control. We extracted 80 readings and the average
was computed as shown in Table I. One more integral part of
the app is the scanning of products using RFID reader. Hence
its necessary to calculate its accuracy by observing the
response time a user takes to scan the products to the app.
Although the RFID reader is very efficient, various other
factors such as orientation of the products, speed of scanning
etc. play a crucial role in determining this time. This is
recorded for 10 readings and is tabulated in Table II.
 TABLE I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
RESPONSE TIME (AVERAGE OF 80 READINGS)
RESPONSE DEVICE DEVICE DEVICE DEVICE We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Almighty
TIME(milliseconds) 1 2 3 4 God for giving us the opportunity to carry out the research in
FORWARD 27.45 28.62 27.99 27.34 a successful manner. We extend our sincere thanks to Amrita
BACKWARD 38.20 37.25 36 37.8 Vishwa Vidyapeetham and the Humanitarian Technology
LEFT 26 36.75 33.42 31.29
(HuT) Lab for aiding us in this in this venture.
RIGHT 32 30.92 33.20 31.25
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STOP 34.21 25 30.12 31
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[11] Ruinian Li, Tianyi Song, Nicholas Capurso, Jiguo Yu, Jason Couture,
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features into the application. A customized user interface will IEEE Internet of Things Journal, Volume: 4 , Issue: 6 , Dec. 2017
be provided to the app with artistic features. The app will be [12] Francesca Stradolini, Stefano Riario, Cristina Boero, Camilla Baj-Rossi,
extended to make it compatible to serve a large number of Irene Taurino, Grégoire Surrel, Giovanni De Micheli, Sandro
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