Reflection 1 — Shopping Cart Escalator
“ Shopping Cart Escalator “ also can be called “Shopping Cart Conveyor”, which is a device I found in Target and Costco. It is similar to an ordinary escalator, and the difference is that it carries a shopping cart. It is always used in multi-level retail stores for moving the shopping cart parallel to an escalator. People can load their heavy shopping carts onto the shopping cart escalator and take the escalator beside it. Then they can collect the cart at the next level.
I choose it because the method we carry the heavy shopping cart in multi-level stores in my homeland China is different from it. We only use the travelator, which is showed in the picture below, to load both shopping carts and people.
In my opinion, the shopping cart escalator is more creative and convenient. First, the shopping carts can be carried horizontally. If people buy many things, the feature of horizontal can ensure that the purchased items will not easily fall from the cart. Compared with the travelator, which is inclined. If the items are stacked high, there is a risk of collapse when pushing the cart on the travelator. Secondly, people do not need to use much effort when sending the shopping cart to the track for the escalator. As long as the shopping cart is sent into the track, it will transport the car up by itself. However, the travelator requires people to take a lot of effort to push the shopping cart and force the wheels into the track. Handling at any time to prevent the cart from slipping backward is necessary for using the travelator. Another reason I think the shopping cart escalator is creative is that I find the running speed of the shopping cart escalator is slightly slower than that of the human escalator next to it. Such a small detail design can ensure that people have enough time to move the cart from the track after reaching the next floor, reducing the probability of the escalator suspension’s occurrence because the shopping cart is not taken out from the track in time.
