Smart table devices and accessories for determining ordering aspects and bills

What is this patent about?

’011 is related to the field of interactive hospitality environments and automated transaction processing. Specifically, it addresses the technical challenges of monitoring guest needs and accurately allocating costs in a multi-user dining setting without constant manual intervention by staff. The background context involves the difficulty restaurants face in maintaining high service standards and gathering granular consumption data during busy periods when employees cannot monitor every table state simultaneously.

The underlying idea behind ’011 is the transformation of a standard dining surface into a spatially aware sensor array that treats the table as a coordinate system for both users and objects. By correlating the physical coordinates of diners with the shifting locations and physical states of items like plates and glasses, the system can autonomously infer consumption patterns. This removes the need for manual order entry by identifying which specific person is interacting with which item based on proximity and physical changes detected at the table surface.

The claims of ’011 focus on a system and method for automated bill splitting driven by real-time spatial telemetry. The independent claims specifically cover the process of determining individual locations for multiple people at a table, tracking the location of items on that table, and using proximity logic to associate a specific item with a specific person. Crucially, the claims require detecting a change in the item—such as a change in weight or a consumption event—to trigger the automatic allocation of that item’s cost to the correct individual’s portion of the bill.

In practice, the invention utilizes a variety of embedded transducers, such as weight sensors, RFID readers, or motion detectors, to create a live map of the table’s surface. When a server places a drink in front of a guest, the system registers the item's coordinates and weight. As the guest consumes the drink, the sensors detect the reduction in mass or the frequency of the glass being lifted. Because the system has already mapped the guest’s seating position via weight sensors in the chair or mobile device triangulation, it can definitively attribute that specific beverage to that guest’s tab.

This approach differentiates itself from prior solutions by moving away from manual point-of-sale entry or simple QR-code ordering. Instead of relying on a user to declare what they consumed, the proximity-based association logic allows the environment to observe and record transactions passively. By monitoring physical measurements like temperature and weight in real-time, the system not only automates billing but also provides a feedback loop for service, such as alerting staff when a glass is nearly empty or when a hot dish has cooled significantly, indicating a potential service issue.