Interactive window-shopping could soon be a reality

Washington, Jan 15 (ANI): Interactive window shopping has been tested only in lab simulations till now, but experts from the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) in Berlin, Germany, are testing the concept with pedestrian passageways and shopping centers.

"Interactive shopping has been standard operating procedure in the web for a long time. Now, we're putting this technology into pedestrian passageways and shopping centers with the entire unit behind the window, said Paul Chojecki.

The interactive shop window enables people passing by to put goods behind shop windows onto a display with simple hand and facial gestures.

Four little cameras continually record the 3-D positions of the hands, faces and eyes of persons passing by. The image-processing software calculates the coordinates and transforms them into the corresponding inputs for selecting goods, viewing them in detail and immediately purchasing them - even after business hours.

Chojecki said that "there's nothing comparable in Germany yet and today shops only use touchscreens in shop windows, if at all. But, you can interact with our interactive shop window without any physical contact, which is a benefit if hygiene is important to you."

He added that "the system doesn't store any personal data and only the coordinates of the body parts it recognizes are passed onto the visualization."

The interactive shop window can also suggest on the basis of the gathered data what products and information the people passing by are interested in.

The researchers will be demonstrating the system at the CeBit Fair in Hannover, Germany Fraunhofer's joint stand (Hall 9, Stand B36) March 1 to 5, 2011. (AN)