GE Lighting has launched a navigation system that enables retailers to communicate with customers through their smartphones using LED lighting.
This smart-shopping system from GE Lighting and US startup ByteLight allows retailers to send offers, directions to particular products and information services to their customers through LED lighting in and around the store.
iBeacon-in-bulb can ‘talk’ to any smartphone or tablet with a camera and/or Bluetooth Smart tech – so long as the user opts-in. ByteLight has combined visible lighting communication (VLC), Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and inertial device sensors with GE’s LED lighting, to turn fixtures into indoor location waypoints.
Shoppers can download the retailer’s app and opt-in to the service, which will allow the retailer to track their location in and around the store and send them notifications. Their phones or tablets will then be able to pick up the unique light pattern being emitted by the LED fixtures through the device’s camera or Bluetooth detector. It then notifies the ByteLight platform of not only the shopper’s position, but also which direction they are facing, down to sub-metre accuracy.
Sub-metre accuracy means the location will be less than one metre out. Most GPS systems have an error of between two and five in their position accuracy.
This allows the retailer to deliver location-based services and personalised content to each shopper, across a large area – from the carpark to anywhere in the store.
Regular customers could get a personalised shopping list as they approach the shop, with an easy-to-follow map to optimise shopping time. They could be told exactly where to find certain products and be notified of personalised deals based on shopping history and position in the aisle.
Retailers could even share customer reviews, product information videos and connect on-demand with virtual associates.
“The use of GE’s LED fixtures for location-based services brilliantly demonstrates how LEDs can go beyond the traditional ROI of energy and maintenance savings to fundamentally change the way people shop,” said Jerry Duffy, global product manager for GE Lighting. “ByteLight’s technology ensures a cost-effective approach for indoor location by not requiring additional hardware infrastructure beyond the lights themselves.”
The technology works with any smart device equipped with a camera and/or Bluetooth Smart tech. The ByteLight technology has been incorporated into GE’s Lumination LED Luminaire IS Series.
CEO and Founder of ByteLight, Dan Ryan, said: ‘The value proposition for LED lighting is becoming less about illumination and more about innovative applications and services. We’re excited to work with GE to help reinvent LED lighting into a platform for indoor-location services that will revolutionise the in-store shopping experience and make LEDs play a strategic role in the connected retail experience.”
This news comes not long after Philips piloted a similar retail navigation system, which relays location-based information to shoppers via a smartphone app using VLC technology.
Lighting first reported on ByteLight’s retail navigation technology a year and a half ago, where Ryan told us how there is “a whole host of applications than can be built on top of the digital infrastructure of LED lighting”.
