Future Merchant Design Laboratory at Innovation World Festa 2019

2019.10.11

Members of Future Merchant Design Laboratory of RIT, a specialized theme laboratory, attended this year’s technology and music festival, Innovation World Festa. Held from September 28-29 at Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, Innovation World Festa is regarded as a gathering place for innovators, artists, and cutting-edge technology companies of various fields representing Japan. Over the two-day festival this year, there were numerous live performances as well as guest speakers who gave talk and special sessions on AI, start-ups, and the transformational changes of digital media and art platforms.

Various technological booths and exhibitions were put on view at the conference, including exhibitions by RIT in collaboration with University of Tsukuba. The three exhibitions on display this year included the following:

I. Review-kun, in collaboration with e-zakkamaniastores (a Rakuten Ichiba merchant) and University of Tsukuba (Faculty of Art & Design)

Review-kun is an AI-speaker-like system that shares product reviews to in-store customers. It scans products using their built-in barcode readers and introduces both positive and negative reviews analyzed by sentiment analysis with NLP solutions. In so doing, Review-kun helps customers make decisions by providing a third-party evaluation and enhances their experience.

II. Furoshiki, in collaboration with University of Tsukuba (Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems)

Furoshiki is an augmented-reality media, taking its name from a traditional Japanese cloth used to wrap goods, gifts,and even bento boxes. Furoshiki interweaves the old and the new by extending the traditional wrapping act of furoshiki with today’s recognition and projection video technology.

III. Stacktown, in collaboration with University of Tsukuba (Faculty of Engineering, Information, and Systems)

Stacktown is a mixed reality experience which creates a city in the CG world by building physical blocks.

We want to thank the organizers for their invitation, FM Radio Station J-Wave and University of Tsukuba co-sponsors, as well as all the trailblazing guests and attendees.