Shoppable Indoor Maps by Google

Not  a new thing, we saw several examples of this in retail in the 90s.  Put it in our retail experiments.  Even Google was experimenting with the idea then.   Though it did not evolve.   Some saw it as a means of delivering useful VR.  Will it now become more common?    See my 'indoor navigation' tag for much more. 

Will Google Maps bring a new dimension to the in-store experience? by Tom Ryan in Retailwire

Google Maps’ Live View function has long helped tourists and locals navigate metropolitan streets and explore restaurants and other sites in view of the company’s roving cameras. Now, with an artificial intelligence (AI) boost, Google is bringing the technology indoors.

Google is on track to bring over 100 AI-powered improvements to Google Maps to provide “the most accurate, up-to-date information about the world, exactly when you need it,” according to a company blog.

Live View, based on scans of tens of billions of Street View images, is known for providing individuals walking city streets with insights into nearby restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, hotels and pharmacies. For restaurants, insights include ratings, prices and whether they accept reservations and are “open now.”  ... ' 

Indoor Positioning for Retail Innovation

We worked on this problem for our own innovation center tests.

A Smart Indoor Positioning System for Retail Automation

For the last few years we’ve been hearing about the retail apocalypse, though we would characterize it more as a retail extinction event. The difference being that until a couple of months ago, the demise of many brick-and-mortar businesses was a long, drawn out affair. No more. COVID-19 has caused a true retail apocalypse – goodbye, JCPenney, Pier One, J Crew, and company – by hastening the death of these ailing giants. There’s obviously a knock-on effect to tech companies shopping retail automation solutions. However, for one small Silicon Valley startup spun out of MIT, the novel coronavirus brought an unexpected opportunity for its thermal-based indoor positioning system.

You’re Being Followed
We’ve been covering the automation of retail for quite some time, from cashierless stores to robotic fulfillment centers in retailers like Walmart. The real money, of course, is in marketing. But it’s no longer necessary to blast messages and advertisements across a black hole and hope a few escape the gravitational pull of customer indifference. Today’s retail tech promises marketing precision by attempting to track and predict customer behavior in real-time both online and in the physical world. 

A company like Zenreach, for example, makes a pretty good case of ROI for its WiFi hotspot marketing software that tracks how well the store’s message is doing based on how many people walk through the door. Audio beacons are another way that stores can directly track customers by using sound to locate people through their smartphones. These technologies do start to leak into the creepy zone when you realize that the devices are communicating about you and your shopping behavior at a frequency you can’t detect. They also think you’ve put on a bit too much weight with all of the COVID-19 stress eating.

In fact, there are quite a few indoor positioning systems that scientists and startups have developed to track motion and trajectory. Not all of it is directed at marketing. WiFi motion sensors, for example, use WiFi signals for various smart home applications like security and even in-home elderly care, with algorithms trained to detect falls and too many trips to the cookie jar.

Briefly About Butlr  .... "

More on Kroger Fashions, Marketplace Experience

Toured and Wandered the Kroger Marketplace experience yesterday.  Impressive, my only argument was against the sheer sizeof it.  Everything seems to be there, but where?  Will their new Edge system include a navigation capability, or have one in their Kroger App?   Last I saw it the App did not include a navigate from here capability.

Kroger shakes up own-brand fashion with one fell swoop
by George Anderson  with additional expert comments, in Retailwire.

Kroger announced on Monday that it has teamed up with Joe Mimran, the designer behind the Club Monaco, Joe Fresh and Pink Tartan labels, to develop a new exclusive apparel brand for the retailer.

The new line, known as Dip, will include men’s, women’s, juniors, kids, and baby collections. The clothing is being introduced this fall at 300 of Kroger’s Marketplace and Fred Meyer supercenter format stores.

“We’ve worked closely with Joe and his team to develop a line of clothing that works for today’s times — easy to buy, easy to wear, and easy to love. Effortless style, every day of the week,” said Robert Clark, Kroger’s senior vice president of merchandising. “Dip will transform our apparel business, further redefining the customer experience through Restock Kroger.” ... '

Drone Swarms Flying without GPS

Brought up in a recent challenge for Drone Swarms and Drones indoors.

This Autonomous Quadrotor Swarm Doesn't Need GPS    By Evan Ackerman in IEEE Spectrum

UPenn's autonomous quadrotor swarm doesn't need GPS or external localization to fly indoors or outdoors. .... "

Target Guides Customers with LEDs and Beacons

Navigation was a long time exploration of our innovation center explorations.   Here beacons and LED lights are combined with an App.

With expert discussion.

Target guides customers through the aisles with beacons    by Matthew Stern in RetailLink

Shoppers may soon have an easy way to find what they’re looking for in Target stores, thanks to a new Bluetooth beacon-enabled mapping feature on the retailer’s mobile app.

The beacons, built into the LED lighting of the stores, enable shoppers using the Target smartphone app to see their own position on a store map, according to TechCrunch. As customers move through the store, their position on the map changes correspondingly. App users can also click on products on their shopping lists to reveal the location of the item and see if it’s on sale.

While some of the most familiar implementations of beaconing technology, like triggered coupons, have proven unpopular with customers, some retailers have had success with in-store mapping. .... " 

On Indoor Positioning Systems

We did considerable research in how indoor location systems could be used and their influence on retail behavior.  In Retailwire: 

Indoor positioning systems are adding relevance to omnichannel shopping.
A richer experience, bridging digital and physical channels.
Today’s empowered consumers use multiple digital channels to search out products. But, while physical stores may be their ultimate destination, retailers are still struggling for ways to maintain the continuity of their searches once they arrive.

According to this report from Opus Research, one of the most promising solutions to emerge is VLC (visible light communication), which uses pulses emitted from LED lights to communicate with smartphones. And since LEDs are rapidly being adopted for their energy savings, many retailers may already have a funding model in place.   .... "

Google's VPS uses Tango and Lens

Google's new Visual Positioning System takes learning, Navigation to new Levels.
By Brad Bourque

Google has unveiled its Visual Positioning System, which could usher in new ways for navigating the world and learning 

As Google rolls out a slew of new features for Android and Daydream, one stood out as a triumphant convergence of a number of projects from parent company Alphabet, including Project Tango, Google Maps, and Lens. It’s called the Visual Positioning System, or VPS, and it uses internal sensors and cameras to help you navigate the world around you.

The practical use is simple, even if the underlying technology isn’t. Users can walk into a store and point their phone’s camera in front of them. After identifying what it is you’re looking for, VPS will kick in, using visual data and previous sessions to point you in the right direction. Google showed it off in a hardware store, but it’s not hard to imagine how the technology could be extended to malls, large stadiums, theme parks, or museums. .... "

GPS Navigation in Tunnels

Navigation via Waze, but only in tunnels with Waze beacon support.    " .... Waze worked with Bluvision to create custom beacon hardware designed to suit moving vehicles and solve historic, tunnel-specific location challenges. This makes Waze the first navigation app to accurately route drivers, in real time, as they navigate through tunnels where Waze Beacons are installed. ... " 

UPenn's Lab Flies Drones Through Windows

In IEEE Spectrum,  some remarkable things that drones can now be programmed to do, like fly through half open windows.   Out of UPenn's labs.   Demonstrated in video at the link.  Gives me considerable pause about what our drone and robotic enabled future will look like.  For now,  keep your windows completely closed.

See also Vijay Kumar Lab, Penn Engineering

Project Tango Video

Video of project Tango, using a smartphone, here used to map and discover contents of a Barcelona complex museum floor.   Consider retail applications to make navigation, discovery and engagement more intelligent.     With existing smartphone hardware.   Further connection with Beacon technologies that associate for engagement?

Driverless Carts

More on driverless carts in retailwire.  And a discussion.   Maybe its not the smart of carts that is important, but the inconvenience.

Helping Drones Fly Indoors

From Augmented Pixels, a ompany I have had some conversations with, with a touch of space modeling?  Another Tango?  More about Augmented Pixels.

Project Tango Area Learning

Mentioned previously here for retail applications.

From Google I/O

Streaming at the link.  (My apologies I thought these would be recorded at the link, but apparently are not.  Only streamed at time indicated.  If anyone has a link to the recording, let me know and I will replace with a link here)  An intro has been placed at the link below for now.

Introducing Project Tango Area Learning
May 18, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM / Stage 1 | Hercules  (PST) 

Motion tracking on a mobile device has already enabled a whole new range of experiences, but what would be possible if your Project Tango device could have a memory? With Area Learning, Project Tango can not only see the space around you, but it can also remember the space around you. This opens up a new range of possibilities for Project Tango developers - attach virtual objects to the world that remain in place even when you restart an app, design multiplayer experiences and know the exact location of each player, pause/resume AR/VR experiences, and eliminate motion tracking drift. We'll go over basic concepts of area learning and best practices for Project Tango developers. ..  ... " 

Announced that a Tango enabled phone will be announced by Lenovo  this year.
Tango devices will be made available next month. 
Further announcements to be made here on May 18 at 3 PM PST. 

Ground Based GPS

So many crucial services depend on GPS today.    Beacons are a technology that address this.  We examined indoor location finding for retail.   Also may be key for implementing an IOT of many things, behind many walls, in new contexts.

In the SA:
The terrestrial network could eliminate the GPS’s blind spots and advance indoor mapping ... 

Anyone who has struggled to pinpoint his or her location in a mall, airport or urban canyon amid skyscrapers has experienced a GPS gap firsthand. In fact, the global positioning network is filled with them: buildings, jammers and the landscape itself can block a signal's path between GPS satellites and receivers in a smartphone or other digital device. Technologies such as Apple's iBeacon have attempted to fill in holes with linked sensors that track indoor location using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but a new ground-based system by Australian company Locata is the first to produce a signal that merges seamlessly with the GPS network. And it is incredibly accurate. ...  " 

Kroger Tests Smart Shelves

We experimented with a number of related methods, combining, visual, sensory, sensing,  locating, effecting capabilities, linked to many kinds of data and analytics.  An Internet of Grocery things.  Will this make the physical shelf and aisle like the Internet?  Is that enough to bring the two venues together?    Here just a few technology examples, video at the link.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:
Bringing the ‘info-richness of the Internet to ... in-store shopping’

Imagine a trip to Kroger where your grocery list tells you where the nearest item is – and sends you an alert if you accidentally pass it by on the shelf. ... Next, you need a small item like a spice and, just as you approach the crowded rack, the shelf lights up right under the whole (not ground) coriander you’re seeking.

Finally, you need gluten-free pasta and just as you approach the shelf with all the pastas, it highlights all the choices that meet your dietary needs. ... What you’ve just imagined is not that far off. Kroger is deep into experimenting with “smart shelf” technology at a store in Cold Spring. Company officials are ramping up the project and plan to test several additional applications.

“It’s not a question of ‘if;’ it’s a question of ‘when,’ ” said Christopher Hjelm, Kroger’s chief information officer.  ... "

DARPA Promoting New Tracking Methods

What are the broader implications of these new methods commercially?   What comes to mind are technologies that will be more precise and reliable inside buildings,  notably for retail applications and emergency response. .In CWorld:

" ... New types of self-contained instruments are under development that could better track position, time and direction of motion, which are critical aspects of GPS. DARPA is developing high-precision clocks, self-calibrating gyroscopes and accelerometers, and high-precision navigation instruments that can track position for long periods without relying on external sources.

DARPA is also researching new technologies that could make real-time tracking possible through a number of sources. DARPA is developing sensors that "use signals of opportunity" such as television, radio, cell towers, satellites, and even lightning, for real-time tracking. The effort, called ASPN (All Source Positioning and Navigation) alleviates issues related to fixing locations in buildings, deep foliage, underwater or underground, where GPS access can be limited ... "

An Adaptive Dance of Drones

In NewScientist: Drones continue to advance, their cooperation, adaption and autonomy is particularly interesting.

Garmin Heads up Display

Garmin has introduced a Heads up display interface (HUD) , to be placed on a car windshield, to be made available later this year.  " ... The HUD is a small box that sits atop the dashboard. It offers two ways to view directions. It can project them onto a thin film that is applied to the inside of the windshield, or it can project them onto a reflector lens that attaches directly to the HUD. Either way, Garmin claims that the HUD provides "crisp and bright directions" that are in the driver's line of sight and viewable at a glance. ... " -  Note the heads up display on right is not Garmin's display.

Indoor Positioning and Navigation

An important approach for retail navigation applications.   We studied this for a number of inventory and checkout applications.  Also in conjunction with tagging applications.  Computing Now gives an update of current methods.

Google Maps is Back for iOS

I have been a user of Google Maps since its Beta Days,  where we tested it for geo data environmental and marketing applications.  Now as an iOS phone and tablet user, I was dismayed to see it removed from that environment.  Now it is back and I downloaded it.  It brings back Streetview and turn by turn navigation.   Also transit and walking directions for major cities, which I found very useful.   And a direct link to Google Earth.  The new user interface is simpler and nicely done. Have yet to find something I did not like.   Try it.