Leverage Penguin Edge Platforms’ AI Capability for a Retail Space Solution
Technology has changed so rapidly in the past decade and we are seeing new applications for mobile computing in various fields. With vast progress being made in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) algorithms, applications that previously involved manual labor are now being automated. These technologies are now constantly being used to solve some of the most common problems in our day to day lives.
One such field is the retail space where traditional retailers are competing not only against each other but also against e-commerce companies. A Smart Shopping cart could be a game changer for retailers and is a solution to some of the common problems faced by shoppers. It is much easier to add technology to the shopping cart than to an entire store! A Smart cart is an automated system that can detect products being added to the cart by the consumer.
Let’s explore some of the advantages of using such a system.
First would be the ease of doing business. The consumer can skip checkout lines and would just need to add all necessary products into the cart and walk out of the store! The products are recognized in real-time through AI and sophisticated sensors placed on the cart. An integrated display could navigate the consumer through the store, advertise relevant promotions and show more information about items as they are added to the cart. Billing and checkout occurs immediately from the cart through an integrated card swiper and thus enables a complete cashless system.
Inventory management is a key aspect of this system. Shop owners get real time data about products being purchased and will thus be aware of depleting stocks and consumer buying patterns.
As more consumers adopt to the smart shopping cart, more data become available for the deep learning algorithms to identify items more accurately with the help of image recognition cameras and a weight sensor. With connectivity, data from all shopping carts can be processed at the edge to arrive at useful retail analytics that can help cross-selling. Shop owners can also design improved floor plans based on consumer behavior using this analytics data. Connectivity also enables consumers to share shopping lists with their partners thereby enabling them to shop in parallel without duplicating their purchases.
Digital assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant have been helping us with our daily lives. Integrating these assistants will provide an improved experience for the shopper in terms of store navigation and preferred product information.
Penguin Edge’s product-ready embedded design platforms enable exciting IoE applications like the smart shopping cart with Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ Processors at the core. These platforms have the ability to run ML algorithms and process enormous amounts of data at the edge. SMART recently announced the Inforce 6503, a compact compute module in an LGA package featuring the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 660 processor which would be an ideal product to drive use cases like the smart shopping cart.