Lost in the mall? Count on the guiding light

SINGAPORE — Lost in a shopping mall or need to find your way to the promotions or products you are looking for? Let your smartphone talk to the lights around and they will show you the way.

That is visual light communications (VLC) — a LED-based indoor positioning technology that could be deployed by Philips Lighting in one of CapitaLand’s malls here by the end of the year.

All the shopper needs to do is launch an app and allow the front camera on the smartphone to pick up a unique light frequency emanating from the Philips lights in the mall. The shopper’s location in the mall will be identified, and he or she can find the way around. Meanwhile, retailers are also able to use the location-based service to attract shoppers with targeted marketing messages.

Philips said yesterday it is conducting the world’s first pilot of the technology in a mall, where VLC is being used to enable communications between the Dutch technology giant’s light fixtures and shoppers’ smartphones in a CapitaLand mall. Philips has so far tested this technology in supermarkets such as Carrefour in France and Aswaaq in Dubai.

It did not disclose the name of the mall in which the new technology is being piloted, but said the technology could be deployed by year’s end depending on the outcome of the pilot. CapitaLand will decide later whether to roll it out at more malls.

“We are talking to several retailers and we expect that those looking at providing innovative experiences to their customers will be interested … Connected lighting is poised to serve as the backbone of the smart city, where LED light points can be connected, be managed wirelessly in the Internet of Things,” said Ms Patricia Yim, market leader, Asean Pacific, Philips Lighting. Lighting has proven to be an ideal platform for systems and software that allow individual structures and entire cities to operate more efficiently and sustainably than before, she added.

The announcement was made at Philips Lighting opening yesterday of its new Lighting Application Centre (LAC) at its APAC Centre in Toa Payoh. The LAC, spanning 5,296sqf or about the size of six four-room HDB flats, was built at an investment of S$1.8 million.

Besides the VLC pilot, CapitaLand and Philips Lighting have joined hands in three other pilots, including the cloud-based Philips ActiveSite for remote management and maintenance of facade lighting without the need to be present in the building’s control room; the power-over-Ethernet lighting system that offers office workers the flexibility to control lighting of their workspaces through an app in their smartphones; and a green parking system, which delivers light where and when it is needed based on motion sensing, generating energy savings while ensuring a safe level of lighting in the car park.

Apart from CapitaLand, Philips Lighting is also collaborating with Toll Global Logistics as well as Temasek Polytechnic and Admiralty Secondary School to drive the next wave of innovation. Rumi Hardasmalani