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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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @01:20PM
large vans full of all sorts of junk
Its interesting that no one has moved in on that.. that I know of.
Something like a small shipping crate full of mini-bar style "you open it you bought it" with near zero labor costs would appear to be almost sustainable as a business. Maybe with uber/task rabbit style delivery of special parts via a phone app if you want something not usually stocked.
Note that plumbing supply stores catering to professional licensed plumbers still exist and sometimes are cheaper than home depot, so HD hasn't killed all competition, just most.
An interesting hack on licensed journeyman electrician being $40/hr or whatever it is now, would be hiring a dude who sits in the truck and sells you parts to work on your own home for $10/hr. It would be incredibly illegal for a guy like that to do plumbing work where I live, but there's nothing wrong with a trained manufacturer's sales rep demonstrating how an obscure plumbing tool works and renting it to me.
Essentially rent-a-center has made piles of money renting, like, concrete mixers, and now they're renting a concrete mixer plus a dude with ten toolboxes in his van. I would find this fascinating for car repair work too where I needed a vacuum pump to change break oil and bleed the lines exactly once in my life, and I needed a 4 foot cheater bar to do some brake work exactly once for about ten seconds. A dude with a van would have been pretty convenient.