Systems and methods for customized navigation

A system for providing customized in-store navigation to a user inside a retail store comprising:

• a plurality of product electronic shelf labels (product ESLs) each associated with a set of product items belonging to a particular retail product of a plurality of retail products;
• a plurality of shelf electronic shelf labels (shelf ESLs) each configured to determine a signal strength for each product ESL wirelessly coupled with the shelf ESL;
• a plurality of Bluetooth wireless access points (WAPs) disposed throughout the retail store and used to estimate locations for the plurality of shelf ESLs, the plurality of product ESLs, and customer portable electronic devices disposed at the retail store using Bluetooth-based localization techniques;
• an ESL services control circuit configured to, for each product ESL of the plurality of product ESLs, determine location information for the product ESL using (i) the signal strength between the product ESL and the shelf ESL wirelessly coupled with the product ESL, and (ii) signal strengths between the shelf ESL wirelessly coupled with the product ESL and the plurality of Bluetooth WAPs;
• and
• a navigation services control circuit configured to transmit the location information associated with each of the plurality of product ESLs at the retail store to an in-store navigation interface operable on a portable electronic device, wherein the in-store navigation interface is configured to:
• identify a target retail product of the plurality of retail products from a user input via the portable electronic device;
• based on the portable electronic device coupling or communicating with one of the plurality of Bluetooth WAPs, receive the location information associated with the plurality of product ESLs from the navigation services control circuit via a transceiver of the portable electronic device;
• determine a location of the target retail product identified from the user input based on a corresponding product ESL of the plurality of product ESLs associated with the location information;
• determine a location of the portable electronic device based signal strengths between the Bluetooth WAPs and the portable electronic device;
• and
• display directions from the location of the portable electronic device to the location of the target retail product and a pictorial identification of the target retail product on a display device of the portable electronic device.