It’s no secret that retailers want to better understand how their customers think while shopping in their stores. Knowing what a shopper thinks of things such as store layout, pricing, advertisements, and cleanliness would allow the retailers to better tailor the shopping experience, making it more enjoyable and productive to shoppers. Of course, this would then increase sales for the retailers as well, a mutually beneficial system. The usual way stores determine how customers think of their shopping experience is by a mixture of random surveys, and using cameras to track customers’ movements throughout the store. Now, retailers may have an additional tool to determine how customers think while in their stores.

This past week, Nuralogix Corporation, a Canadian biotech company, had a patent application (U.S. Patent App. No. 20200319706) publish titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DETECTING INVISIBLE HUMAN EMOTION IN A RETAIL ENVIRONMENT.” The application teaches a method of using cameras and AI to monitor the body language and facial expressions of retail customers while they shop. Using customers’ body language and facial expressions, the AI is able to gauge human emotion, thereby allowing retailers to understand how customers think while shopping. Using this information, the retailer will be able to better cater to the customer. Of course, there are some privacy concerns about retailers ever-growing ability to monitor customers, but only time will tell if this technology actually catches on, especially with online shopping becoming the new norm for so many people. To stay up to date with the most recent AI Biotech and Diagnostics news, make sure to subscribe to the Magic Number® AI Biotech/Diagnostic Patent Forecast®.