ARMart – AR-Based Shopping Assistant to Choose and Find Store Items

Supermarkets offer a wide range of products which makes it challenging for consumers to choose between the different options and find the items they are looking for. Augmented Reality (AR) applications, however, have a high potential to enrich real-world objects with information which can be leveraged to improve this process. We developed an application that runs on a regular smartphone and helps users to choose between packaged groceries based on factors such as calories or sugar, rated on a scale from red (bad) to green (good). Compared to previous work, there is no need for a priori knowledge about product locations making the system suitable for many use cases. Moreover, information maps precisely onto the outline of the product's and not on the approximate shelf. To do so, no modifications of the objects, such as specialized tags, are necessary. Additionally, users can find items just by entering the name. Highlighting the packaging virtually helps to find the desired product. It is also possible to make a binary distinction between groceries that contain specific ingredients.