Grocery Visual Search Engine

梯度边缘是一家总部位于英国的科技初创公司，专注于数字商务、数据和机器学习领域的创新。该公司正在与Innovate UK合作开发杂货视觉搜索引擎功能。由詹姆斯·威尔特希尔和安迪·希尔创立的梯度边缘专注于帮助零售商将下一代数据驱动的体验带到他们的数字商务平台上。该项目将开发专门的食品杂货领域计算机视觉能力，将定制的最先进的机器学习模型与高性能的云本地可扩展架构相结合。正在流行的新冠肺炎，尤其是前所未有的锁定措施，已经对可访问性、性能、在线服务的可伸缩性和可用性--最明显的是在线杂货购物。食品购物行为必须从实体商店转向在线--特别是在老年和弱势群体中，许多人需要屏蔽任何外部接触。英国主要超市的在线食品杂货服务的容量和可用性一直存在着有据可查的挑战。许多首次使用的用户无法注册，无法预订送货时段，并且发现在线用户体验困难和困惑--特别是在只有免费文本字段搜索输入匹配的巨大产品范围内导航或搜索。我们认为新一轮杂货技术浪潮潜力巨大。该项目将开发一项核心服务，可以支持一系列新的改进的在线杂货购物体验，包括可视化产品搜索、快速购物/收藏/补货列表创建、增强的产品替代、聚合/市场产品可用性或价格比较优化。重要的是，我们的解决方案将进行设计、原型和迭代，以增强可访问性，并改善更多人的在线杂货购物用户体验。包括那些不太懂数字技术的人。该计划是与英国超市和更广泛的杂货在线服务合作，尽可能快地为尽可能广泛的人群试行这项新技术的好处。

Gradient Edge, a UK-based technology start-up focusing on innovations in the digital commerce, data and machine learning space, are developing a Grocery Visual Search Engine capability in partnership with Innovate UK.Founded by James Wiltshire and Andy Hill, Gradient Edge is focused on helping retailers bring next generation data-driven experiences to their digital commerce platforms.The project will develop a dedicated grocery domain computer vision capability, combining custom state-of-the-art machine learning models, with a performant cloud-native scalable architecture.The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, and in particular the unprecedented lockdown measures, have placed huge societal importance around the accessibility, performance, scalability and usability of online services - most notably online grocery shopping.A profound shift in food shopping behaviour from physical store visits to online has been necessitated - especially among the older and vulnerable populations, many requiring shielding from any outside contact whatsoever.There have been well-documented challenges with the capacity and usability of the main UK supermarkets' online grocery services. Many first time users have been unable to register, unable to book delivery slots, and have found the online user experience difficult and confusing - especially navigating or searching across huge product ranges with only free text field search input matching.We think there is huge potential for a new wave of GroceryTech.The project will develop a core service that can power a host of new improved online grocery shopping experiences, including visual product search, quick shopping/favourites/replenishment list creation, enhanced product substitution, aggregated/marketplace product availability or price comparison optimisation.Importantly our solution will be designed, prototyped and iterated to enhance accessibility and improve the online grocery shopping user experience for more people, including those less digitally savvy.The plan is to collaboration with UK supermarkets and wider grocery online services to pilot the benefits of the new technology as quickly as possible for as broad a section of the population as possible.