FORM 2
THE PATENTS ACT, 1970
[39 OF 1970]
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION
[SEE SECTION 10 & RULE 13]
1 TITLE
Midas Carte Du Jour
A REAL TIME, INTERACTIVE, SCALABLE, SECURE, TOUCH SCREEN SURFACE BASED, SEAMLESSLY NETWORKED SYSTEM TO NAVIGATE CUISINE MENU & MANAGEMENT OF THE META DATA BASED ITEMIZED OISH ORDERING AT MULTIPLE LOCATION, EXECUTION, DELIVERY & PAYMENT TOWARDS THE PATRON'S CHOICES
2 APPLICANT
NAME Titbit Interactive Systems Pvt. Ltd.
ADDRESS 602, CENTRE POINT, J. B. NAGAR,
ANDHERI - KURLA ROAD, ANDHERI (E), MUMBAI- 400059.
NATIONALITY INDIA
The following specification particularly describes the nature of the Invention and the manner in which it is to be performed:

FIELD OF INVENTION AND USE OF INVENTION
People customarily visit restaurant to fuffill their appetite. The choice of freezing the category of eating joint depends his/her desire for particular type of food, affordability, hygiene, promptness in service, happy hours(discounts) vicinity of eatery from his/her current co-ordinates, dining partners convenience, time slot of the day, transportation, safety on return at odd hours etc.
Basically the judicious choice of place is combination of his personal preferences (profile) matching with the most compatible hospitality joints from the wide database.
However, many times in spite of zeroing on most appropriate restaurant, the experience is not joyful, due to several reasons viz. bad service from waiters, non-availability of certain items, change in management leading to change in cooking style, lack of modernization, real time fluctuation of prices leading to collapsing of the budget or taxing to pockets of individuals.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
Therefore inventors have designed an innovative solution to tackle both the issue in simplest possible way by making use of Touch Screen Based Interactive Surface coupling with user profile in real time.
Basically it uses Elograph sensor with multiple wires and transparent material couple with capacitance /infra red/ acoustic wave / resistance based technology for multipoint touch response without stylus.
Omnipresent computing is the mantra of this smart devices era. Incredible inventions like touch-screen device have revolutionized the communication interface.
Inventors are keen on implementing their novel interactive tabletops to restaurants and bars, thus minimizing human interface or rather enabling waiter to focus on serving rather the seeking and delivering ordered dishes.
Till the instant ordered food is served on table, further level of interaction with these smart surfaces permits guest to entertain himself as well as his distantly located but online family / friend /colleagues through interactive social networking sites, watch and hear customized music, video or advertisements.

The guest can also sponsor a dish for his remotely located relative /friend / colleague if he is online ether in global chain of same or different outlet through payment gateways supported by the interactive menu card.
As the GUI if the said menu card keeps track of personal choices of guest, it counts the real time energy consumption by the guest and accordingly suggests alternative dish(s) to guest to maintain his permitted quota of calorie intake. Further, based upon the history and clinical information updated in the history of profile of the guest, the allergy alerts are activated to avoid any unpleasant experience while ordering and consuming the interactive menu based dishes.
Further Features Of The Invention
(1). The system will have the ability to learn about users tastes and preferences. So if the user has ordered food using our system in a few restaurants and as liked/disliked a few items, the system will automatically learn from this and when the user goes to a completely new restaurant, the system would make intelligent recommendations from the menu based off the users past choices. To do this the system will employ sophisticated machine learning/classification algorithms.
(2). With social components integrated, the system allows the customer to look at the list of items that each one of his friends had liked at the restaurant while they were there. This provides them an additional data point to take a decision about what to order.
(3). Customers can instantly share their feedback about the restaurant/dishes with their friends while they are at the restaurant
With this technology, the waiting period between
(a) Ordering of food till its delivery and
(b) Consumption of food till clearance of associated bill can drastically be reduced
However same period can be used to acquire qualitative knowledge, recreation, entertainment and interaction.
Key feature of the Invention
The system combines dine-in, delivery, take-out and table reservation with a single platform. From a consumer standpoint, this translates into multiple things -

[1]. The consumer may not be at the restaurant but could still use the tablet or mobile based solution to look for the dishes that they want to order and place an order for take-out or home delivery.
[2]. Customer can search and identify the restaurant that serves that dish he would like to eat and then book a table at that restaurant with the same application.
[3]. Customer could be in a city/area that is completely new to them and may wish to have a meal. In such cases, the they could use the tablet/mobile application to look for restaurants in the vicinity (the system will automatically get the users location using GPS), the user could filter the list of restaurants based of the cuisine, menu they serve, at a same time, check if a table is available at that restaurant and if so, book a table. The system would even guide the user on how to get to that restaurant.
[4]. Customer could pre-order a meal at the time of booking a table so that whey they reach, their food would be ready to be served.
Detailed Description
Conventionally the cafes or majority of eating joints provide a paper based menu card which intrinsically has limited information about the name of the item to be ordered and associated price tag.
This leads to criminal wastage of precious time & resources between a serving waiter and guest sometimes creating confusion, incorrect registration of order, quantity / number of items, type of items, shortage of serving accessories, un-proportionate billing, refusal of reordering due to non-availability of certain items on verification from kitchen by waiter, change in shift of waiter etc.
Hence the guest not only gets frustrated with such bad experience, but the restaurant loses its images and brand value brining bad name to all the stake holders in the hospitality business. This is purely due to lack of availability of meta-data about ordering a dish.

In the current scenario, inventors have replaces the conventional table top with a proprietarily designed highly interactive table top surface which can understand gesture and touch of the user.
The table top is an environmentally friendly, shockproof, semi-transparent surface made from special material. It has embedded menu card analogues to the paper menu card. The surface is christened as "i-PARIS" and the menu card will be addressed as "e-MIDAS" The system comprises a combination of the following:
A backlit LED display thats heat stain resistant, scratch proof and handles reasonable amount of pressure, controller unit that basically comprises of: a CPU a separate graphics processor. Flash Memory. Wifi receiver HDMI connector/cable, Re-chargeable battery, server computer with proprietary server software installed, Wifi router & repeaters, proprietary Controller software thats installed on the controller unit. And One or more printers for printing the Kitchen Order Tickets (KOTs)
The system as embodied on the table top contains a display panel which is laid horizontally on top of the table and secured using fasteners. The table could be any regular table used at the restaurant. The controller unit is placed below the table and is connected to the display using an HDMI cable via a hole drilled in the table.
The server computer is setup in the IT/Administration area of the restaurant and the software installed on the server computer allows the restaurant management to setup menu items, pictures and videos of menu items, settings for showing advertisements, feedback form etc. Essentially it is one common place from which all the data setup and settings could be done. The wifi router is connected to the server computer and makes it accessible over wireless to each of the controllers. The controller connected to each of the display panels communicates to the server computer over WiFi. With this, hard wiring with cables is not required.
The system by means of the controller software makes a request to the server software and fetches all the content. This includes menu items, images and videos, advertisements, feedback form etc.. It then processes this information and presents it on the touch screen display. The display system uses real world analogies to make the presentation intuitive for the user and allow the user to easily interact with it with touch gestures. For example wines are shown as bottles placed on the shelf and the user can scroll. Or for example the menu item are shown on a booklet that the user can browse by flipping pages. The guests can then interact with the menu and tap on menu items to make their selection. Once the user has made their selection, they tap on a virtual Order Now button. This instructs the

controller unit to submit the order to the server computer with an HTTP request over Wifi. The server computer process the order, determines what is to be printed to each service station and prints accordingly. It also pushes the order into the restaurants point of sale system.
The other embodiments of this system include a hand held tablet device or a touch screen fixed on a stand to act as a kiosk. The only difference in the setup is that in this case the touch screen and the controller are physically the same unit and do not have to communicate over HDMI.
The guest occupant can select the language by pressing appropriate choice (including Braille). Further, the system pops up the menu card with conventional formats such as names of the dishes on left hand side and corresponding price tags per quantity on right side.
Here onwards on touching the price tags, the foreigner can select the cost matrix in his native currency or internationally accepted / familiar currency for ease of comparison and budgeting.
Moreover the list of dishes can be scrolled alphabetically or ascending, descending order of prices/calories etc. It further tells about the timings. Date, happy hours, discounts with dishes.
Upon activating the selected item of the dish, the embedded screen pops up (e.g. figure of KALPTARU / KAMDHENU / COCONUT TREE/ LOTUS Flower format) highlighting wealth of information about the type, quantity, brand of ingredients which goes on while making of that item, style of cooking e.g. Jain/Kosher/Halal or.
The nutritious value of the items along with its calorific content, origin / historical /geographical facts about the dish e.g. Moglai/Mexican/Thai/Chinese etc.are displayed on further selection of appropriate choice from the popped menu.
Subsequently, navigating and touching upon the sub-sections (e.g. stem, petals, and roots of aforesaid menu) parts on the previously popped up screen informs the guest about

approximated waiting period. Side effect /allergy of the food being served are also communicated. With embedded smell sensors aroma and three dimensional or 360 degree or sectional view of the dish can be observed.
Guest can review the comments of the guest who had patronized the dish in past.
Features of the Invention
Thus instead of an outdated dumb or static menu card and bill print-outs, guest can leverage benefits of intelligent touch screen technology in combination with digital visual content, graphics and photography, dynamic eye-catching slide-shows, user-friendly interface, and quick online updates of information related with items being served.
Thus, if convinced of the sought meta-data about the restaurant and dishes, the guest can affirmatively marks the chosen dish with his finger and execute the order.
The system here has a smart interface which communicates wirelessly and is integrated with the inventory management software in the store and kitchen section.
Real time processing on either ends reduces the time frame required for preparation, delivery, execution of re-order dishes and benchmarking of items in inventory simultaneously. Thus the guest is blessed with prompt service.
The system help the respective cook / chef and his teammates (servers) to track the recipes, images and videos of ordered food, plan its preparation and presentation, manage table settings and other guidelines with customized set of instruction per guest.
Thus guest will peruse the virtual menu on their tables, and place the order without having to say a word making it a true waterless ordering.

On the payment side, the guest can simultaneously opt for mode of payment towards the generated bill. Accordingly, either on line or off line transaction can be communicated to the device at cash counter or POS. The transaction is updated in the profile of the user with all the embedded details of the served food, venue, schedule, price and desired information.
This enables pesky waiters to focus on meeting "non-dish order/payment" related or serving instructions from the guest. The can afford to spend quality time in learning food patterns of the patrons and update or guide them on handling the interactive menu card and payment
Another version of the same solution permits guest with i-PAD to interact with the application on interactive table top menu thus helping him to save further reserve table, place order and save time.
The application can be operated remotely or from hotel room either through interactive mobile devices or through interactive, resources saving, user friendly kiosk in the lobby of the hotels.
Thus the uniquely designed interactive menu card is technically a robust, with long life, environmentally stable, transparent, simple to install, sensitive to multiple touch, having intense light resistance, smallest response time, high speed processing, beverage & heat proof with support of LCD monitor to make attractive dining top.

We claim:
1 A real time, interactive, scalable, secure, touch screen surface based system for a
restaurant for providing information including the menu to a customer
Comprising of
A. A backlit LED display that is heat, stain resistant, scratch proof and handles reasonable
amount of pressure.
B. A controller unit that basically comprises of:
a. A CPU
b. A separate graphics processor
c. Flash Memory
d. Wifi receiver
e. HDMI connector/cable
f. Re-chargeable battery
C. A server computer with proprietary server software installed.
D. Wifi router & repeaters
E. Proprietary Controller software installed on the controller unit.
F. One or more printers for printing the Kitchen Order Tickets (KOTs) and
G. The customer base having means to wirelessly network with a mainframe server at the
restaurant end to access the services offered and especially the menu having a
proprietary designed table top comprising of
H. The display panel laid horizontally on top of the table and secured using fasteners the panel having an interactive surface which can understand touch and gesture and wirelessly networked with a main server
I. The controller unit placed below the table and connected to the display using an HDMI cable via a hole drilled in the table.
J. Software pre loaded carrying detailed menu and the previous choices of a returning customer
2 A system as in claim 1 wherein there exists choice of languages in which the menu can
be displayed
3 A system as in claim 1 wherein the provisions have been made to translate the data
contained in the Menu to the language requirement of the customer by means of

4 A system as in claim 1 wherein the provisions have been made to convert the currency of an item to indicate in the currency choices of the customer by means of providing
5 A system as in claim 1 wherein details of each item, its ingredients, style of cooking can be observed from a pop-up menu accessed.
6 A system as in claim 1 wherein the caloric value of an item can be calculated for enabling customer to ascertain whether to order it.
7 A system as in claim 1 which provides the time that would be required to serve the customer with the item
8 A system as in claim 1 wherein is provided means to access a database of comments of other customers in respect of any for any and all particular items in the menu.
9 A system as in claim 1 wherein the recipes, images or videos of the items are accessible to the chef for easy preparations in the kitchen
10 A system as in claim 1 wherein the order of the customer is directly transferred to the kitchen and on the completion and serving of the order the communication of the total amount is displayed.
11 A system as in claim 1 which is wirelessly connected to a printer for print out of the bill or payment receipt.
12 A system as in claim 1 wherein payment can be made by means of credit card directly by the customer.
13 A system as in claim 1 wherein a customer can comment on the quality of the items served.
14 A system as in claim 1 having means of creation of a feedback form.
15 A system as in claim 1 wherein the customer base is mobile hand held device having wifi or 3G accessibility.