Supercharging the Customer Experience with AiFi + RFID

Today, the AiFi’s technology is a success at stadiums, universities, airports, and grab-and-go locations worldwide. Customers love grabbing what they need in under a minute and moving on with their day. Store managers and operators love how cost-efficient the solution is while increasing profitability and customer satisfaction. AiFi uses AI-powered, computer-vision technology to enable retailers to sell a wide range of products such as packaged foods, hot foods, bottled beverages, beer on tap, groceries, and more.

Traditionally at computer vision-based cashierless stores,  products are arranged on shelves so the overhead system can see which items are being taken. For classic, boxed CPG items, this system works well, but when softline goods like clothing are introduced, it can create a problem for inventory tracking.  Boxed product inventory levels are easy to keep track of for our camera based solution.  That’s because from an inventory perspective, one box is one box. But with softline goods, while the cameras can see the garment has been picked up, it is difficult to know what sized garment is being purchased using just cameras, which in turn has the potential to create inventory accuracy issues for the retailer.  As autonomous stores rise in popularity, integrating additional sensing modalities like RFID isn't just a choice—it's a necessity. Why? Because radio-frequency identification (RFID) expands the potential for checkout-free technology to clothing, softlines, fan gear, and more. 

By incorporating RFID as an additional sensing modality, AiFi is able to address almost any shopping journey a retailer wants to host with our existing Spatial Intelligence technology, allowing for autonomous checkout without the need for the shopper to stop on the way out. In fact, with AiFi, you’re able to: 

1. Keep Your Customer Journey: No need to add a “Massive Tunnel” to read tags and stop people at the exit. AiFi augments the system’s visual understanding of the shopping trip with transaction information from a simple RFID antenna concealed in the ceiling that reads the tags as the shopper walks by.  Not only is the shopping trip frictionless, but you can create the assortment you want with no restrictions, tagged and untagged items..
2. Tag What You Need: Because our Spatial Intelligence technology captures most sales through the cameras in store, we’re able to tag only the items necessary (e.g. apparel). Everything else can still be tracked with our system. No need to create the operational burden of tagging all items in the store.
3. Remain Anonymous: Our GDPR-compliant tech means your customer data is fully anonymous and secure.
4. Be Warned About Theft: Spatial Intelligence means you have computer-vision backup. If an RFID tag were to be removed, we will still capture the interaction on camera, reducing or eliminating the possibility of theft or shrink.