Follow The Data


What does antitrust mean in the age of data? Data is in many cases gathered for free and has huge value to those who can turn that data into information and make decisions based on it. Amazon has become an example in retail because they see more sales data than any other retailer – not just what they sell, but what others choose to sell on their platform. Amazon gets to see all the data an... » read more

Accelerate Computer Vision Design Using High-Level Synthesis


Computer vision solutions are all around us, in cars, consumer products, security, retail, and agriculture. But, designing these solutions is not easy, mainly because of constant algorithm upgrades and related requirements changes. This means that wherever the team is in the RTL creation and verification flow, they might have to start over, which can cause an unacceptable delay in the productio... » read more

Mobile Scan-And-Go Technology


Brick-and-mortar merchants are in the midst of a period of unprecedented disruption. Long-term structural trends mean that retailers must address decreasing revenues and escalating costs, while evolving the in-store experience to meet the demands of the connected consumer. For this reason, transformative technologies such as mobile scan-and-go solutions are coming to the fore, with deployments ... » read more

Beacons Beckon Ubiquity In IoT Era


In the early 1900s, radio beacons were created with the aim of tracking ships and planes. Prior to this innovation, pilots and ships’ captains usually relied on celestial navigation, and anyone who wanted to know their location was in the dark. A century later, engineers took the concept and devised Bluetooth Low Energy-enabled beacons, a vast use never envisaged by their 20th cent... » read more

Electronic Labeling Takes Off


One hit product for the Internet of Things (IoT) market is the electronic shelf label (ESL). The ESL is rapidly replacing the paper price labels on store shelves throughout Europe and Asia, as well as within retail giants such as Walmart in the United States. But why are retailers replacing nearly zero cost paper labels with an electronic widget that sells for on the order of $5 each (prici... » read more