proxy is a new application for travel and shopping. It would be an understatement to just say this, because the reality is that this app is very, very different and pioneering. Think of it as a kind of Uber with which you no longer hire someone to take you around with their car, but with their eyes.
As? Through a helmet with a camera. Let me give an example: with proxy I can decide to "hire" someone to go to New York to a fair that I'm interested in seeing in person, but which I can't reach. I put on my virtual reality viewer, my "avatar" puts on his helmet and starts wandering around the fair, following my directions.
Travel through a third party
With the low latencies of fast connectivity and the ever-increasing immersiveness of these devices, it will be like being directly on site. Of course, while standing still: someone else will walk for you and shop (on your behalf). However, the eyes and ears will practically be there.
A spot of shopping to shop through London's Portobello Road markets? A morning walk on Ipanema beach, to hear the calm sound of the waves and watch the sunrise live? It can be done.
“You won't be able to feel the waves at your feet, but you can think of the experience as wandering around the real world (and not the metaverse) through your human avatar,” he says Pulkit Ahuja, founder and CEO of proxy.
Shopping tips
Proxgy, based in the Indian city of Gurugram, launched last year during India's first Covid lockdown. Since then, it has helped more than 1000 people with an average time of over 15 minutes of using the application. The app is free for users and helps with shopping and other things you need help with. The app also allows for more “local” uses. For example, an elderly person can "drive" the helmet camera of his "avatar guide" through a joystick to run errands.
The most "suggestive" function, however, is that of help in visiting an event or place. With this app, people can see what a place is like without going there directly, or before going there. It can also be useful as a preliminary experience for a real trip.
Offer a place as a service
I gloss over the undoubted usefulness of such a service for visits leading to real estate purchases, especially in pandemic times. Putting on a helmet and looking around literally “from the eyes” of someone else can offer new perspectives and food for thought that escape my imagination. You can be part of a "book club" that every evening organizes a small tour and a reading in the most distant places in the world linked to literary works.
You will be able to participate in a real-time treasure hunt by "teleporting" onto the heads of different people in different points of the planet: all in just a few minutes. You will be able to buy any object in the world, in any physical location, making purchases in real places with the ease with which they do in an e-commerce.
The only limit is your imagination. The "virtual" reality, if filled with our human factor, can become an additive to the "real" one.
