US Patent 7558742 Multi-device supervisor support for self-checkout systems

A customer self-checkout system includes one or more checkout stations and multiple supervisor terminals. The supervisor terminals provide support to, and control over, the self-checkout system and checkout stations. A controller is used to coordinate communications among the checkout stations and supervisor terminals over a wired and/or wireless network interfaces. A user may provide input at supervisory terminal using an interface providing context sensitive prompting to enable control using a simple keyboard interface.