Digital Merchandising
The goal of the Digital Merchandising project is to apply projection, sensing and real-time data analysis technologies to meet the needs of modern retailers. Initially, our focus has been on creating interactive, front-projected displays that automatically respond to normal customer behavior. Unlike traditional store displays, front projection allows new capabilities, such as non-flat displays, imagery placed directly on products, and seamless multi-device displays. A mix of capacitive, IR, and camera-based sensors give a rich view of customer characteristics and behavior which is then used to tune the displays to current customer needs.
Background & Objective: MERL has a long history of research excellence in vision and data analysis, but the thrust into retail applications began fairly recently as an effort to identify new markets for video projectors. While various video display devices are used extensively in retailing, front projection has been almost entirely absent. Declining costs and improved projector brightness have recently made the use of video projectors in retail practical. Unlike traditional display devices, projectors naturally lend themselves to huge, immersive displays. By adding sensors and data analysis, we are able to extend these displays to create real-time, interactive environments. We believe that such systems will soon become the norm in retail establishments.
Technical Discussion: Our first interactive display is a mock shoe store, which uses a single video projectors and capacitive proximity sensing, shelves. Normal customer interaction with the shoes triggers the system to provide more detailed information on the selected shoe. A new second-generation display in development uses three projectors, seamlessly blended to create a much larger display. Content for this multi-projector display can be created in Macromedia Flash. It is then rendered into OpenGL for the multiple projectors. The interaction is scripted in Python, which allows for complex system behavior.
Technology Areas:
Off the Desktop Interaction and Display
Computer Vision
Graphics
Modification Date: September 12, 2007