Philips' Intelligent Supermarket Lighting Talks To Your Smartphone
Philips is developing an intelligent lighting system for supermarkets that communicate with your smartphone to guide you through the store, give you deals on products, show you recipes relevant to the items you’re trying to find, and more.
In addition to offering efficient LED lighting that the company says will require no special infrastructure changes, the light fixtures act as a positioning grid. “Each fixture is identifiable and able to communicate its position to an app on a shopper’s smart device,” reads a Philips press release. “This enables the shopper to get information related to his position in the store as they move around the store and location-based services to be triggered. Communication with the smartphone is by Visual Light Communications.”
(Click to enlarge)
If you’ve ever stomped around a grocery store trying to find that last one oddly-located item you need (bonus if you’ve done it with a tired, melting-down child), this would be a welcome innovation. You’d be able to walk into a grocery store with nothing more than a general idea of what you want to make for dinner, and the system’s app on your smartphone can produce a recipe with an ingredient list, tell you where to go to find said ingredients, and even plot the most efficient route to get to those items.
In addition to offering efficient LED lighting that the company says will require no special infrastructure changes, the light fixtures act as a positioning grid. “Each fixture is identifiable and able to communicate its position to an app on a shopper’s smart device,” reads a Philips press release. “This enables the shopper to get information related to his position in the store as they move around the store and location-based services to be triggered. Communication with the smartphone is by Visual Light Communications.”
;)
(Click to enlarge)
If you’ve ever stomped around a grocery store trying to find that last one oddly-located item you need (bonus if you’ve done it with a tired, melting-down child), this would be a welcome innovation. You’d be able to walk into a grocery store with nothing more than a general idea of what you want to make for dinner, and the system’s app on your smartphone can produce a recipe with an ingredient list, tell you where to go to find said ingredients, and even plot the most efficient route to get to those items.
