Amazon patents cart camera that adjusts light to scan products

1. A smart shopping cart, comprising: a frame having one or more wheels, configured for movement along a support surface; an optical module attached to the frame, including: an illumination source, configured to illuminate a scanning area; and an image sensor, configured to scan a code within the scanning area; and a computing module communicably coupled to the optical module, comprising a processor and a non-transitory memory having instructions stored thereon that, when executed, cause the processor to perform operations comprising: determining a sensor frequency for the image sensor of the optical module; determining an illumination frequency for the illumination source of the optical module; adjusting the illumination frequency to define an adjusted illumination frequency, such that the sensor frequency and illumination frequency are intermittently aligned, with one or more misaligned frames occurring between aligned frames, wherein aligned frames are frames in which the illumination source and the image sensor are both active, and misaligned frames are frames in which one of the illumination source or the image sensor is inactive while the other of the illumination sources or the image sensor is active; alternating an exposure time of the image sensor between a first exposure time and a second exposure time, wherein alignment of the illumination frequency with the sensor frequency is performed for the second exposure time and misalignment is performed for the first exposure time, the first exposure time being longer than the second exposure time; scanning the code, by the image sensor, to produce scanning data; and recording the scanning data to the computing module.