Philips has a vision for the future of grocery stores. When you're in the store, you whip out your phone and turn on the Philips app. You're then presented with a map of the store, along with your location in it.

The app will give you specific directions around the store to get the ingredients you need. While you're looking for your groceries, ads from the store will appear on your phone (buy one free one, buy one get something at half price, and so on).

In fact, Philips is demonstrating this setup in a retailer in Dusseldorf, Germany, right now.

An interesting fact about this is that it all comes from light: the entire setup is built into the overhead lights in the store. Philips figured out a way to use the light as a communications method.

Light has many wavelengths, only some of which can be seen by human eyes, so these lights beam out just a tiny bit of data in a wavelength that we can't see, but your smartphone camera can. This little bit of data is then read by your phone in the same way a QR code is read.



Menno Kleingeld, general manager for Philips's indoor lighting business, said that the system won't require you to point your phone at the lights. Instead, your phone picks up the special light frequency from ambient light. "You see more and more people with smartphones in their hands when shopping, anyway," he says.

The two primary concerns with an app like this is that, first, it's an invasion of privacy that gives businesses and corporations an avenue to snap up consumer data and throw advertising their way. That said, "It's totally opt-out," Kleingeld says, meaning that you have to actually download this app to connect to the system at all. If you don't want the grocery store to know your location and shopping history, just don't download the app.

Another concern is that people might not even bother downloading the app - What's in it for them? You might already know where all the ingredients are. But "you could be in a hurry, need to finish your shopping list and need the most efficient way through a store," Kleingeld says, "or it could be triggered when you pass a certain item on a shelf" and are alerted to its existence, usefulness in whatever you're cooking, or some deal. "It could also be coupled to loyalty cards," he says.

But for Philips, it's a futuristic way to pitch an expensive, futuristic lighting system to retailers.