Consumers not only demand new products, but also new forms of presenting them and they react in very different ways before the different forms of displaying them. For this, the companies of the sector know that the presentation of tiles, and other ceramic pieces, influences directly when acquiring a product, against any proposal of strong competition companies. However, in a sector that these years is facing annual falls of over the 15%, any initiative and investment in technology must be very efficient in terms of quality and cost.

In this regard, the University Research Institute on Robotics and Information and Communication Technologies (IRTIC) of the University of Valencia (UVEG), located in the Science Park of this institution has developed a new low-cost system that combines technologies of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality oriented towards the presentation of ceramic products. This system is the result of nearly two years of work and it has been funded by the tile company TAU CERÁMICA, which aims to integrate it in a short term as a part of its commercial platform in its store network. TAU CERÁMICA is one of the largest ceramic companies of Europe, born in 1967 and it has the most complete range of ceramic products of Spain. Currently with a human capital of 500 people it exports its products to over 100 countries around the world.

The developed computer system consists in a contactless point of sale with a 50 inch screen controlled by Microsoft Kinect device. This system allows that the user without touching any element of the point of sale, and even using real pieces with QR-CODE labels can view the collection of ceramic pieces of the TAU CERÁMICA company, which is based on photorealistic images. The selection of tiles, environments and information of the product is made through a new multimodal gestural interface developed by  IRTIC for Kinect devices. For complementing the point of sale, a migration of this application to Ipad2 and Android Tablets (Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Motorola Xoom 10, Sony Tablet S, etc.) has been implemented. For getting the technological migration, and the development of this multi-platform tool, innovative techniques that allow the viewing of images of very high resolution on mobile devices have been used. Such applications are currently available for the general public in the portals “Android Market” and “Apple Store”.

The launching of this new system for presenting ceramic products will be on 7 February within the 30th edition of the International Trade Fair of Ceramics (CEVISAMA 2012) which will take place, at the facilities of Feria Valencia (Paterna, Valencia).

TAU Cerámica