Philips' Intelligent Supermarket Lighting Talks To Your Smartphone
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.”
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.