Tango in the Supermarket and Couch Potato Shopping

AR, Industry

Let’s chat about shopping in the age of experience… how could AR extend the daily business of shoppers? Two examples today!

Tango in the Supermarket

tango-shopping

Walgreens and aisle411 pilot Google’s Project Tango to test a new way of shopping. Walgreens (the big drug retailing chain) wants to create an enhanced shopping experience with extra information for the shopper and in-store marketing and voucher deals (brought by aisle411). The approach uses a Project Tango-enabled tablet attached to the shopping cart. It uses Google’s sensors and algorithms to get the position right and overlay tips & deals. Here the video:

I’d be happy to see more real world footage of it to judge about the quality. It would be interesting to see how stable all tracks when too many obstacles get in the way, boxes of Cornflakes change place, etc. How many features are needed? Also, there needs to be a quickly accessible and usability-focused software avoiding too much input for the shopper. Will the user be able to beam the prepared shopping list onto the device?

Couch Shopping

Startup Vizera presents their projector that adds realistic-looking surfaces to actual objects, here: couches. The technology has been presented before, but now we have a real-life example, where it was actually rolled out into retail stores to support the shopping experience: customize your couch in the store and have a preview of pattern and color of the tissue. You can use a tablet to chose fabric options on the fly. The video:

Though I like the idea, time will tell, if color reproduction is stable enough and the feeling for the potential buyer is sufficient (maybe touching a different material) to get convinced virtually to put the credit card on the counter!

Upcoming: ISMAR!

Probably you have booked your flight to Munich and to visit this year’s ISMAR (main conference: Sep, 10-12th). augmented.org will be blogging on the event of course! If you are in town Tuesday before (Sep, 9th) make sure to stop by at our regular’s table #ARMUC! Hope to meet you there!

Cheers,
TOBY.