Tango’s Visual Positioning Service makes it easy to find your way around a store

At Google I/O today, Google announced their Visual Positioning Service, a new Tango-powered augmented reality system for finding your way around, say, a store, a museum, or a stadium. In layman’s terms, the system uses visual cues with the combination of light, color, and shapes to determine where you are in a store.

It might remind you of Pac-Man.

As you traverse an aisle, the system will compare visual cues in your current area with areas you’ve already visited to keep you on track. All of this stuff is going on in the background, so the user will only see a simple arrow system guiding them to the exact aisle or product they’re looking for in a store.

This not only helps your average user who may walk into a store and not know which aisle to go to, but it’d be a tremendous help for the visually impaired as the device could use audio cues to help you find your way without having to wave down an employee or bring someone along.

This obviously requires some legwork from the building or store owners, but the reward could make the effort more than worth it. See VPS in action by checking out the video up above.