A smart shopping trolley developed by a collaboration between Veea and iFree Group was the highlight of Qualcomm’s stand as this week’s NRF Big Show in New York.

Veea is a New York-based specialist in integrated smart edge connectivity, computing and security technologies, and iFree Group is a Hong-Kong based conglomerate providing global connectivity, smart city, retail and hospitality technology.

At NRF, Veea’s Trollee smart shopping cart experience was highlighted with AdEdge advertising on Qualcomm’s stand to bring to life the future of retail by showcasing the latest shopping experiences. Qualcomm hosted 12 digitised retail demonstrations, highlighting 16 global ecosystem partners.

Veea, in collaboration with iFree Group, created the Trollee smart shopping cart supported on Veea’s VeeaHub platform.

The cart, enabled by Qualcomm APQ8053 and IPQ7153 IoT products, was developed by iFree Group and leverages hybrid edge-cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), indoor positioning, contextual digital advertising and other technologies powered by VeeaHub. The aim is to revolutionise big box and supermarket retail by bridging the online-to-offline customer journey and experiences.

AdEdge is a full-featured end-to-end advertising platform offering cloud-based and local management of in-store advertisements. Its contextual digital advertising platform intelligently and proximally micro-targets shoppers, or visitors at any venue, in the real world with interactive and immersive advertising from a global network of advertisers. It processes real-time data from multiple sources to provide holistic insights and deeper intelligence about ad performance, viewer attentiveness, demographics and shoppers’ preferences.

Retailers can set a full range of advertising campaign goals and constraints that are delivered locally through VeeaHub’s CDN content delivery network with the ability to cache the ad content for targeted, personalised advertising supported by accurate indoor positioning.

VeeaHub powers the Trollee platform for delivery of ads and promotions in real time, linked to location beacons in-store, so retailers and brands can engage customers at the perfect moment to influence their buying decisions. It leverages its on-board AI and activity monitoring data collection software to carry out simple automated decisions that enhance customers’ overall retail experience and satisfaction, thus improving customer loyalty and profitability.

The platform may optionally be integrated with the retailer’s loyalty programme and/or PoS to tie in with customer purchase history. Trollee trials are underway in south-east Asia, China and Japan where they are garnering positive feedback from major retailers.

VeeaHub’s Linux server runs user applications in isolation in secure docker containers and supports multiple applications concurrently on one or several VeeaHub units across the mesh network installed at the retail location in a manner similar to the way previous wifi access points were installed.

The integrated platform provides enterprise-grade Wifi 6, IoT and cellular connectivity, including 4G and 5G SD-WAN services, as either a primary or a failover WAN connection, with a cloud-based full security stack for Trollee and other applications within the store. It incorporates IoT connectivity including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Classic, Zigbee and LoRaWan.

VeeaHub nodes installed on the local network instantaneously create a self-organising connectivity mesh, called vMesh, that simultaneously provides for a computing mesh, a microservice-based service mesh, an application mesh and an edge intelligence mesh that also supports accurate indoor positioning.

Retailers can optionally implement other VeeaHub AdEdge-supported offerings such as smart digital signage, augmented reality throughout the store supported by an SDK for the retailer’s smartphone or smart glasses, smart unattended store within the store, and several others alongside Trollee or just independently.

The companies are now making the technology available for proof-of-concept trials with major retailers globally.

Advertising content, special offers and coupons for products in the store are cached on VeeaHub units and are delivered instantaneously when a shopper is close to the advertised products.

Shoppers can find what they need more efficiently while checkout is streamlined, reducing staffing requirements. Based on shoppers’ journeys through the store, retailer’s planograms can be optimised for most shoppers through machine learning and AI. Customers can use this virtual, personal shopping device as a concierge to seek recommendations, discounts and product reviews.

“Retailers win when they consistently deliver exciting experiences to customers, while driving sales of products in their physical stores, supporting brands in disruptive new ways,” said Allen Salmasi, CEO of Veea. “We are delighted to be part of Qualcomm’s retail technology ecosystem and to demonstrate our Trollee smart shopping cart and AdEdge at the NRF event.”