Hacking Towards the Future: Reinventing Retail with Scandit at HackZurich 2016

Earlier this month, Scandit joined more than 500 hackers and 50 companies from around the world to participate in HackZurich 2016. HackZurich is Europe’s largest hacking event, and this year hosted 150 teams for a 40-hour non-stop hackathon. Fighting through sleep deprivation and an overloaded WiFi network, hackers submitted projects using some of the most advanced technology spanning a variety of applications and industries.

Scandit was among the startup sponsors with a booth in the main hall that offered hackers the opportunity to experience our scanning technology firsthand using mobile devices, smart glasses and AR headsets like the Microsoft Hololens. Additionally, Scandit hosted a workshop with leading retailers Valora and Siroop called “Get Phygital”, where participants got to combine online and offline shopping experiences to prototype the future of retail applications. Working with Scandit’s engineers and developers, hackers delivered cutting-edge retail apps using our Barcode Scanner SDK and Flow Platform, as well as Valora’s mobile self-checkout and Siroop’s e-commerce APIs to blend the physical and digital worlds.

During the workshop, 19 teams created and pitched projects that incorporated the latest mobile, wearable and virtual reality technology. The winning application, Check&Out, was a self checkout app that leveraged facial recognition technology to authenticate users and allow them to scan product barcodes in order to pay quickly at the POS terminal. Learn more about the Get Phygital winners here.

The general Audience Award competition was also very exciting, with more than 100 teams competing to win a top prize of 5000 CHF for creating innovative solutions to some of today’s toughest technological challenges. This year, Project Ivy took home the gold with a website development platform powered by voice recognition. Users were able to cast commands at the application and watch their website come to life before their eyes. Learn more about the winners or watch the official video recap to see it for yourself.

Scandit’s team was thrilled to be a part of the action and can’t wait to return to future HackZurich events. It was wonderful to be able to interact with so many talented individuals and witness the passion and excitement of the participants, speakers and sponsors. Until next year, hackers.