The spin-off AITech develops a virtual fitting room

AITech desenvolupa un emprovador virtual

The company Artificial Intelligence Technologies (AITech), a UAB spin-off based at the UAB Research Park, has signed an agreement with the shopping centre Arenas de Barcelona to install aiMirror, a virtual fitting room based on computer vision and augmented reality, that simulates the effect of a mirror in real time. Arenas de Barcelona is one of the first shopping centres in Spain to offer this service to its customers and visitors.

29/05/2013

The technology it uses automatically adjusts the garment or garments to the body and movements of the user in real time. The fitting room has a high-definition screen and a recognition system that records the image and movements of the user. The customers see their image reflected on the screen, as if it were a mirror, and all they have to do is choose a garment they like, select the right size and colour on the screen and check out, virtually, how it looks. The system superimposes and adjusts the image of the garments to the users, who can crouch, stretch out their arms or make other movements with the clothes they are trying on.

“aiMirror offers consumers a fun, fast, interactive way to try on clothes and offers shops and malls a technologically advanced service for their customers and visitors", explains Juan María Sánchez, one of the founding members of AITech. “The fitting room also lets you e-mail the images or share them instantly on social media using any device".

The Arenas de Barcelona shopping centre has installed the virtual fitting room in the area where the centre's image advisor works. Over six months, the fitting room will be available to the public, and will include over fifty garments from different shops in the Arenas centre. Users can try clothes on virtually and then the image advisor can tell them which shop has them on sale.

AITech is already selling the fitting room successfully outside Spain, in countries that welcome this technology In the United Kingdom it has been installed in the John Lewis and Tesco chains, and it is about to be distributed in the United States and the Middle East. In Spain, the AITech researchers hope to install the aiMirror in more stores and shopping centres.

Artificial Intelligence Technologies (AITech) is a company founded by a group of PhDs and lecturers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University, experts in image processing, computer vision and microelectronics. It specialises in Artificial Vision software for smart marketing in the retail sector (displays, sales floors, etc.).