Royal Philips […] announces today the world’s first major install of its connected lighting system with LED-based indoor positioning […] The newly refurbished Carrefour hypermarket in Lille, France has replaced its previous fluorescent lighting with 2.5 kilometres of energy efficient Philips LED lighting that uses light to transmit a location signal to a shopper’s smartphone, triggering an app to provide location-based services.

The Philips system enables Carrefour to provide new services to its customers, such as helping shoppers to navigate and find promotions across the 7,800 square metre shop floor. In addition, the LED lighting will reduce by 50% the total lighting-based electricity consumption of the hypermarket.

[Céline Martin, Director of Commercial Models and Innovation for Carrefour hypermarkets in France :] “Thanks to this new application, which uses Philips technology, we are now able to provide our customers at the EuraLille Carrefour with a new service, enabling them to quickly search and locate their preferred promotions or detect all the promotions around them when in-store. […]”

Philips indoor positioning system consists of LED fixtures, a cloud based location database and a Philips software development kit upon which customers can build their mobile interaction platform. The system in operation at the Carrefour hypermarket in Lille comprises 800 linear LED fixtures that use patented Philips VLC (Visible Light Communication) technology to transmit a unique code through light that is undetectable to the human eye but can be simply detected with a smartphone camera, without the need for any additional accessories.
[Where are the discounts? Carrefour’s LED supermarket lighting from Philips will guide you sur Philips.com]

La vidéo d’illustration qui va bien ainsi que l’application iPhone uniquement pour le moment.

Dommage que ça soit pour une utilisation aussi bête que des promotions de supermarché que cette technologie de localisation par LED soit utilisée; mais le principe est vraiment très astucieux !