Challenges and opportunities for embedded computing in retail environments

Abstract

In the retail industry, real-time product location tends to be a multi-million-dollar problem because of seasonal restocking, varying store layouts, personnel training, diversity of products, etc. Stores maintain planograms, which are detailed product-level maps of the store layout. Unfortunately, these planograms are obsolete by the time that they are constructed (because it takes weeks to get them right), thereby significantly diminishing their value to the store staff, to consumers, and to product manufacturers/suppliers. The AndyVision project at Carnegie Mellon focuses on the fundamental problem of real-time planogram construction and planogram integrity. This problem, if solved correctly, has the potential to transform the retail industry, both in the back-office operations and in the front-of-the-store consumer experience. © 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.