UNITED STATES - Behind the scenes, Walmart has been concocting ideas of what it will look like to shop in the future, and some of them sound like we’ve stepped into a Back to the Future reboot. Perhaps in a bid to take on an Amazon-dominated landscape, Walmart has filed several patents with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, according to CNBC. There aren’t any guarantees that these ideas will come to fruition, but they do offer a glimpse into the future of retail.

Walmart storefront

The six recently published patent filings include:

• Smart shopping carts, paired with a sensing device that could perform navigation operations. 
• Wearable tracking devices that track a user’s activities. Potentially, these could be worn to improve employee productivity. (Amazon applied for a similar device in 2016.)
• In-store inventory trackers that sense when inventory is getting low and send a low stock signal. No longer would human associates check inventory levels.
• In-store drone assistance that could provide price verification and navigation assistance.
• A blockchain ledger to help customers resell products at a new price.
• Blockchain-powered delivery truck fleets, which will make deliveries easier for self-driving trucks. This technology would let these trucks into restricted areas by using “authentication-based access and encryption,” according to the patent filing.

Will this technology see the light of day in one of the nation’s largest retailers? AndNowUKnow will continue to report the latest in futuristic shopping.

Walmart