Retail tech solutions showcased at Biopolis

Customers eyeing a piece of furniture often hesitate to buy it because they do not know how it would look in their homes.

But now, an application by a team of researchers from Dimension 5, a spin-off from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), lets users see how an item would look in a specific room. The 3D visualisations are modelled to scale, and users would be able to drag and drop a design from a furniture company’s online catalogue onto their mobile screens for a look before they buy it.

The team has already secured a contract with a furniture company and is planning to launch the iOS version of the app at the end of the month, with an Android version to come in two to three months.

More than 60 of such infocomm technology-based solutions for the retail industry are on show at the two-day Media Exploits event, organised by A*Star, which ends today. While targeted at industry professionals, the event at the Bio-polis is also open to the public from 9am to 5.30pm.

Other projects showcased are in varying stages of development. These include SoundEye, a monitoring device that detects screams or shouts so that caregivers can be alerted when elderly residents fall.

Mr Philip Lim, chief executive officer of Exploit Technologies, A*Star’s commercialisation arm, said a major objective of the event is to bring together people from different communities, particularly those who understand markets and consumer demand.

“You need to take teams of people and talent forward to where the technology has been groomed, maybe even to the point where they can influence the technology.

“They can suggest better ways of doing things to researchers, based on what people need out there,” he added.