Intelligent Interactive Shop Window

A few months ago, a friend of mine gave a presentation about the music industry and showed us an interactive wall where you can play music on. On the wall there was a piano, a trumpet and some drums, but in fact you can play almost every instrument you want. If you push the wall you “play” the instrument and if you want you can even form a band with your friends, it would look and sound (even as awful) like this:




I thought it was cool (if you are drunk or a 2-year old), but if playing music was its only function, why should anyone wants to have such a bright, colorful, and maybe a bit ugly wall in their house or office? Well , last week I found that a interactive wall has more functions than only playing music. I joined a guest-lecture of a employee of Philips who also showed us a interactive wall, but this time it had a lot of other functions than playing music.



The functions of this interactive wall has nothing to do with recreation but mainly with marketing, Philips calls it the Intelligent Shop Window. When you stand in front a display window of a clothing shop, a camera recognizes your eyes and displays at the window what you are looking at and displays the article you are looking at. Furthermore, you can “look” into the shop through a on the window displayed catalogue, it shows you sizes and prizes of the clothes. You can flip through the pages like you are shopping or like you are flipping pages in a paper catalogue. Next day you can go back to the shop and buy the things you saw last night displayed at the display window.