Quick stepping through the DIY store

On the West Coast of the USA, Lowe's is testing a new In-Store Navigation system in two of its stores as a pilot project. The system makes use of augmented reality to guide customers through the store by means of a smartphone app, thus eliminating the time consuming search through aisles and shelves for the required products. One of the stores in question is in Sunnyvale, California, a neighbour to such recognizable tech companies as Google, Facebook and Apple. The other store is up in the North West in Lynwood in Washington State.
Similar to the Pokémon Go last year, which developed into a short term, worldwide mass phenomenon, the customers looking for goods are guided by arrows, dots and texts displayed on their smartphones. Depending on the direction the smartphone is pointed, the app steers the customers in the right direction and ultimately to their desired products. A video, aptly named the Customer Journey, can be seen on the website at www.lowesinnovationlabs.com/instorenavigation.

This navigation system with 3D depth sense is all made possible by a breakthrough technology on the mobile phone market: The new app, developed by Google and christened with the name Tango, brings a spatial perception to the smartphone by means of a fish-eye camera - a kind of visual GPS.
The customers in Lowe's pilot stores can now make a digital shopping list and the app leads them directly to the items in store. Tango-enabled smartphones and the in-store navigation app from Lowe's are a must, but for those customers who don't have a Tango-enabled device, a demonstration with a store assistant's device is on hand to help out during the pilot phase, according to Lowe's homepage.
Lowe's navigation app was developed in Lowe's Innovation Lab in collaboration with Google and Lenovo. The software behind the app, known as Lowe's Vision App will include many other functions in the future. The visual GPS customer navigation is a reality nowadays that has little to do with futuristic or crazy ideas and this is emphasized by the fact that a Tango-enabled device has already been launched on the European market. Other manufacturers have also announced further model launches. For the moment, navigation through the shelving units using a shopping list at Lowe's pilot…