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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the where-is-the-restroom? dept.

As a kid, I always wanted to be on the TV show "Supermarket Sweep."

In the middle of a Lowe's store in 2017, my dream almost came true. The home improvement retailer is rolling out an augmented-reality app that tells you the fastest way to find items on your list.

It's powered by Google's Tango, an indoor-mapping technology using special cameras to sense depth in 3D space. Measure objects, map a room and see virtual objects in the real world with augmented reality.

With a phone in one hand and a shopping cart in the other, I'm rushing around the aisles pulling items off the shelf. On screen I see a yellow line overlaid on the camera image, navigating me to the next item on my list. There's an aisle and shelf number in case I get really confused, as well as an estimate step counter that tells me how far I have to go.


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  • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday March 20 2017, @05:12PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Monday March 20 2017, @05:12PM (#481593)

    Having worked as one of those people, I can tell you lots of people needed help. Sometimes it was only in finding products, but other times it was more, "how do I use this" and so forth. When it was more advanced than that, I was just step 1, and directed people where to get good information (because the first pages of Google in that industry were all sponsored junk, more about directing traffic than actually informing you).

    Also, this was only part of the job. It was also directing foot traffic, stocking shelves, cleaning messes, finding lost children, protecting people from themselves (or in one case from their parents), mitigating "shrink", and so forth...

    It was fun but it doesn't pay well and the non-sales promotions available are filled by people that often work those jobs for decades...

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