US Patent Issued to 7-ELEVEN on March 18 for "System and method for determining an item count in a rack using magnetic sensors" (Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,253,389, issued on March 18, was assigned to 7-ELEVEN INC. (Irving, Texas).

"System and method for determining an item count in a rack using magnetic sensors" was invented by Shahmeer Ali Mirza (Celina, Texas) and Matthew O'daniel Redmond (Denton, Texas).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system includes a longitudinal rack storing a plurality of items, a shoe movably attached to the rack, a magnet coupled to the shoe and a longitudinal circuit board arranged along the length of the rack. The circuit board includes an array of sensors along the length of the rack. Each sensor generates a value depending on a position of the magnet in relat...