NEC Corporation (NEC) will start offering "NEC Shelf Fixed Point Observation Service", a cloud service that focuses on product shelves and supports DX at retail stores, for retailers such as supermarkets and drug stores on February 25. Announced.

In this service, AI automatically visualizes the inventory amount of product shelves in real time from camera images, and provides employees with information on shelves that need to be replenished or advanced. It was first adopted by Tokyu Store Corporation, and is scheduled to go into full operation in June 2022.

In recent years, the retail industry has faced various issues such as a decrease in the market size due to the declining birthrate and aging population and a declining population, and an increase in labor costs due to a labor shortage. In particular, in actual stores, in order to maintain the product shelves in the optimum condition, there are many employees who come and go between the sales floor and the backyard due to the work of "sales floor check" to grasp the status of the product shelves and "delivery" to replenish the products. It is a work load for the staff.

NEC has started offering this service, considering that the key is to maximize the capabilities of product shelves, which influence the competitiveness of stores, and to minimize operating costs. As the first step, it will start offering a "sales floor check function" that visualizes the current state of product shelves, and will promote functional enhancements such as a "product delivery alert function" that informs shelves that need to be delivered in the future.

NEC's fixed-point observation service uses NEC's unique AI-based image recognition technology to automatically visualize the stock quantity of product shelves in real time by simply registering one image of the product shelf for pre-learning.

With the dedicated mobile app, you can extract only the product shelves from the images taken by the in-store camera, correct the distortion, and easily check it on your smartphone. It is also possible to display priority on product shelves that require product replenishment and notify the app. By utilizing the handwritten memo function, it can also be used for sharing information such as work instructions.

NEC's patent-pending technology is equipped with a person erasing function as a basic function, and the state of the product shelves can be stably confirmed by erasing the reflection of people. It is possible to manage camera images in consideration of privacy. According to the company's release, it is the first feature in the industry.

It will also be provided as a video cloud service that includes camera equipment. Since it is an IP camera, it can be easily installed without the need for complicated construction. By saving the camera image inside the store on the cloud, it is possible to grasp the situation and centrally manage it from the headquarters or outside the store, so efficient operation can be realized.

The outline of this service is as follows.

＞＞ News release