Smart lighting is an indoor positioning technology that offers highly accurate, real-time location information as a beacon alternative. Today at Place Conference, Aisle411 and Philips Lighting discussed what the retail world looks like when utilizing smart lighting.
Nathan Pettyjohn of Aisle411 started by saying that 30 centimeters is extremely important as it relates to indoor location tactics. For example, getting the aisle location wrong changes the context of the shopper dramatically. As it relates to accuracy, Pettyjohn outlined the level of location accuracy of the various indoor technologies:
- Beacons: 1-20 meter accuracy
- Wi-Fi: 2-5 meter accuracy
- Computer Vision Mobile-Device: 10 cm accuracy
- Computer vision sensors: 2 meters accuracy
- Magnetics: 1-3 meters accuracy
- LED VLC: 30 cm accuracy
The discussion of LED VLC and its 30 centimeter accuracy, led into a discussion with Gerben van der Lugt of Philips Lighting on “smart lighting.” Van der Lugt talked about the power of this lighting to not only illuminate a space, but to also sense contextual information and communicate with other devices. He called smart lighting the “central nervous system” of buildings.
He shared the video below to show how smart lighting is helping a grocery store improve the customer experience by delivering location-based services to shoppers’ smartphones.
