Integration of Sensors to Improve Customer Experience: Implementing Device Integration for the Retail Sector

Within the retail sector, a broad range of sensing devices are used to capture data to be interpreted into retail intelligence. The sensors many capture simplified data sets, such as the number of customers who have walked through a doorway or down an aisle, to more complex data, such as demographic or behavioural data. For a retailer this provides an opportunity of analyzing a rich source of information to optimize the customer experience and thereby improve sales. However, the sensors that are deployed are typically manufactured by different vendors, and may be installed over an extended period of time. This leads to difficulties when integrating and triangulating the data in an automated system as each retailer may have a bespoke collection of capture devices. This paper reports upon a project to overcome these challenges through the adoption of approaches taken in Field Device Integration (FDI), commonly used to integrate sensors and actuators in a manufacturing environment. The paper proposes an architectural model based on investigative work, and also discusses a related issue that has arisen in the implementation of the framework, that of multitenancy.