Augmented Reality Shopping Framework

Augmented Reality (AR) is becoming an important computing platform with the potential of enhancing the experiences of everyday users. One of those experiences is shopping. When customers buy any product, it is very discouraging to locate vital information such as the expiration date. This paper discusses an AR solution for shoppers that want to elevate their shopping experience in general by an enhanced information search. The solution can be also expanded in the future to assist shoppers who are suffering from a reduced visual sense. A proof of concept application is developed to test the solution, where we simulate a medicine shopping scenario. The application we developed on the HoloLens uses the Vuforia SDK to tag products and display information about these products. In addition, it contains elements that can alter the text size thus providing assistive support option for the visually impaired in the future. We predict that the convenience of having information displayed next to products as well as the ability to control the text size will make shopping more pleasant. Our architecture shows promise for a full assistive technology for the visually impaired that could be vital for the community, and there are future plans to port it to a different platform such as Android or iOS. Moreover, the architecture harnesses the ability to customize the information that the user can select to view, such as instructions, ingredients, and/or users' review. We conclude the paper with our look into the future.