Wegmans Store Assistant

Getting confused while searching for your favorite products at Wegmans? Don't know where to find them? Don't worry! Wegmans Store Assistant is there for you!

Comment

Inspiration

While shopping at Wegmans, it usually becomes a hassle to search for a specific item due to the size of store. We often keep wandering around to find items at their locations. This can be especially difficult for the elderly and those who are differently abled. So, we developed a plugin that can significantly reduce the effort and also provide an interactive method of finding product at real-time. It makes the mundane shopping experience more interesting.

What it does

It is a google assistant plugin that helps users in finding the location of a product in a Wegmans store. The user can input a certain product to the assistant, in either speech or text form, and get the Aisle name. This helps in reducing the time consumed in searching the store and confusion among buyers.

How we built it

  • We used the Wegmans API and get the API end points for Product operations
    • Find the API end point for searching for a product
    • Get the sku_id (stock unit ID) for that product
    • Find the API end point for getting the Product Location
    • Get the corresponding aisle details for a the given product using its given sku_id
  • Created an agent in Dialogflow
  • Wrote the Python Script in Repl.it and called the API endpoints to both
  • Deployed and Tested it using Google Actions

Challenges we ran into

  • Virtual coordination and collaboration
  • Data Parsing issue into JSON format
  • No compressive documentation of the updated Google Actions Console
  • Deployment issues with Google Actions

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • The project as a whole and the efforts we put into it
  • Being able to learn new technical skills in only a couple of hours
  • To implement a custom Google Assistant Action from scratch
  • To integrate an external API within the Google Actions
  • Deploying on Google Actions directory.
  • Planning, organizing, collaborating and implementing a product within a limited time

What we learned

  • Using the Wegmans API and handling API calls for retrieving Products and Stores information
  • Developing the Google Assistant using Dialogflow
  • Connecting the API end points to the Dialogflow interface
  • Training the assistant on a set of inputs for searching products
  • Learned how to use Flask
  • Deployment and Testing using Google Actions

What's next for Wegmans Store Assistant

  • Expanding the functional of the plugin to multiple stores
  • Integration with Google Tasks to get the aisle details at once
  • Providing the feature of adding a product to the cart using the assistant

Built With

Share this project:

Updates