NewAer Kiosk Brings 'Minority Report' to Life

The NewAer Kiosk, a proximity-based marketing app, doesn’t need beacons and will turn devices into location-based marketing portals.

GPS receivers rely on a network of satellites to calculate the exact location of a device in the open air.

However, inside buildings, their efficiency decreases significantly because of the errors induced by indirect trajectories and the weakening of signals.

Now, companies try to tackle the tough technological challenge of indoor positioning and its promising market.

Apple’s iBeacon, First Indoor GPS

Launched four years ago, Apple’s iBeacon, which exploits BLE or Bluetooth Low Energy, allows a device or other to send a signal to a piece of hardware nearby, which can determine the position of the iBeacon.

Placed in a physical space, it allows low-power wireless signals to be sent to locate a user in a specific area and to transmit data to a mobile device.

Apple used iBeacon on a large scale by equipping all of its stores in the U.S. and then at its international sales outlets.

This system was eventually also adopted by other brands, such as the Macy’s department stores chain and the clothing specialist the American Eagle Outfitters.

But, iBeacon technology didn’t see big interest mainly because users have to download an app for each retailer or brand they have to deal with.

Industry 4.0 is about integration of technologies, not the increase in the number of apps to take advantage of new technologies.

NewAer Kiosk Proximity-Based Solutions

NewAer, Inc. (formerly Neuaer) is a company that develops proximity-based SaaS solutions.

Unlike iBeacon, with the NewAer Kiosk, retailers can communicate directly to their clients via a Universal proximity-based app, without the need of iBeacons or multiple apps.

Kiosk is a beaconless and customizable interactive display for the iPad, the 4th generation Apple TV and Raspberry Pi 3.

The NewAer Kiosk renders iBeacon apps obsolete by simplifying proximity marketing, allowing any retailer, brand or consumer to use a single app as a host communicating with a client on any tablet.

If a customer is nearby, a brand, whether it’s a major chain or a one-point retailer, can communicate to them product information, location-based rewards, discounts and other buying incentives.

Upon customer engagement acceptance, brands running Kiosk can target them with special content and messages to those present in front of the host screens within a space.

If that rings a bell, it’s because that specific feature of Kiosk calls to mind a brief scene from Tom Cruise-led film, Minority Report.

In the film, Chief John Anderton, Cruise’s character, undergoes an eye transplant to bypass recognition systems. He walks into a Gap store, and an AI character in a display addresses him (as the person to whom belonged the eyes) and asks him whether he enjoyed the pair of trousers he had bought from the store.

That’s only one facet of the “marketing” potential of Kiosk and other location-based solutions to come.