Collaborators: Maggie Popova, Chanu Lee, Jinwei Shi, Kamsi Orazulike
ASHA is an AI-powered shopping assistant designed to help non-English speakers navigate B&Q stores independently. Through field research, we discovered that customers often rely on children to translate product names, leading to confusion and lengthy store searches. We developed a handheld device that uses ultra-wideband technology for indoor location tracking and LLM translation to match foreign language descriptions with B&Q products. Users can speak product names in their native language and be guided directly to the item, then scan and collect it at checkout. The solution addresses a real accessibility barrier - 8 out of 19 B&Q stores in Greater London serve areas where over 5% of residents cannot speak English well.