An edge-optimized retail analytics
system for autonomous in-store decision support, consisting of: an
edge computing unit housed in a robust, thermally conductive
enclosure and configured for use in a retail store environment;
System-on-Module (SoM) mounted on a multilayer
printed circuit board (PCB), wherein the SoM comprises a multi-core
central processing unit (CPU) configured to manage sensor data
orchestration and rule-based
inference processing, and a
neural processing unit (NPU) configured to perform deep neural network
inference operations in real time; a high-bandwidth
volatile memory module electrically connected to the SoM to buffer time-aligned multimodal sensor streams; a non-volatile
solid-state drive (SSD) configured to persistently store AI model weights,
inference outputs, and business-specific event logs; a
power management circuit integrated on the
printed circuit board, configured to regulate the input
voltage of a Power-over-
Ethernet (PoE) line; and a sensor interface
bus that is connected to a variety of sensor modules, including
visible spectrum cameras, thermal imaging sensors, passive
infrared motion sensors, RFID readers, and
load cell-based shelf weight sensors.