Acuity Brands Acquisition of ByteLight Adds Indoor Location

Acuity Brands announced a move today to bolster its abilities to offer indoor location services via its luminaires, with an agreement to acquire ByteLight Inc., Boston. Terms weren’t disclosed other than to say Acuity paid cash and acquired certain assets, including ByteLight’s patent portfolio and all other intellectual property rights.

Acuity said in a releases that the combination of ByteLight's technology with Acuity’s Visible Light Communication (VLC)-enabled drivers and LED lighting platforms will provide retailers with a method of delivering digital content to shoppers and associates within a retail store in an effort to increase customer loyalty and revenues while also reducing operating expenses.

ByteLight pioneered the use of VLC and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technologies in combination with smart-phone apps and cloud services to transform LED lighting into indoor location waypoints. These waypoints provide shoppers with indoor navigation and also allow retailers the capability to create a more connected, personalized, and engaging shopping experience for their customers by communicating specific and targeted digital content to a shopper's smartphone.

“Incorporating ByteLight's indoor positioning technology with Acuity's digital lighting platform is a natural fit as we work closely with leading retailers to help shape retail shopping in a connected world,” said Steve Lydecker, Acuity Brands Lighting senior vice president of applied integrated solutions. “Combining the ByteLight BLE beacons and platform solution with the existing pinpoint accuracy available with Acuity Brands' indoor positioning technology will allow our customers to quickly recognize the transformational value associated with precise indoor positioning.”