You Personal Healthy Food Shopping Assistant
When you decide to lose weight, one first step is to clean your kitchen of all the junk food and go shopping for healthy diet food. Right?
But do you know what “healthy” food means?
We tried in the last few years to teach you how to read the labels and how to choose the write food for you, but I know it’s not always easy.
Have you ever found yourself in the supermarket staring at a shelf full of different cereal boxes, wishing someone could just point out the one with the best price, lowest sugar content, and the best reviews?
IBM thought of that and found a new solutions for smarter retail: your personal shopping assistance.
The new smartphone app developed by researcher scientists at IBM’s lab in Haifa, Israel, is about to change the way you shop. The application will use your smart phone or tablet video camera to pan over products on the shelf and it will instantly display recommendations and offers based on your specific preferences.
We’re going way beyond simple facial recognition for products to provide superimposed information that points out the products shopper prefer – whether based on previous purchases, price, consumer rating, sodium content, environmentally friendly packaging, or other considerations
said Amnon Ribak, project leader.
For example, you know you want a high fiber snack, low in calories and at a good price, but you don’t actually know what brand you want. If you points a smart device camera at the shelf of cookie snacks, the app will recognizes the merchandise and displays information on the device’s screen, superimposed on the product images.
Your personal shopping assistance application will highlight information based on your stated preferences, and it can also offer coupons or special discounts that may apply.
This has the potential to completely change the shopping experience from one of hunting, reading, and searching to simply picking up those products you prefer.
Ribak said
The application uses techniques used in facial recognition, color and shape matching, and associations with surrounding products. It can take into account the mobile device’s camera angle, and distance from a shelf to help distinguish between products.
Aside from assisting shoppers, the new application could also help retail managers organize their stores, instantly point out what’s missing on the shelves, or summarize which products were on sale during the week.
As more and more shoppers use the application, it will give retailers deeper insight into how their customers shop – which is an analytics goldmine for optimized shelf and store arrangement.
Your personal shopping assistance application is not yet on the market, but keep an eye on it.
RSS Trackback URL 18. July 2012 (15:22)
Filed under: Steaming diets, Tips by Nessie
2 Comments»
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