The University of the Philippines-Diliman’s sari-sari store-inspired artificial intelligence (AI) environment simulation has been picked as one of this year’s best innovations for the International Conference on Computer Vision 2025.
The ‘Sari Sandbox: A Virtual Retail Store Environment for Embodied AI Agents,’ from the team led by Prof. Rowel Atienza of the University of the Philippines-Diliman College of Engineering’s Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute, was selected as one of the ‘Best of ICCV,’ a prestigious showcase of research from among 12,000 submissions worldwide.
‘This recognition at ICCV, one of the world’s most competitive conferences in computer vision and AI, demonstrates that the Philippines can stand alongside the world’s best researchers in AI,’ Atienza said.
Sari Sandbox is the first comprehensive retail store simulation environment designed to train AI systems in performing shopping tasks.
With the project’s photorealistic 3D simulation environment and dataset from human participants interacting with it through a virtual reality controller, embodied AI agents could learn complex shopping behaviors and tasks, from navigating store aisles to reading product labels such as expiration dates and scanning barcodes at checkout – benchmarked against authentic human behavioral data.
Lead researcher Janika Deborah Gajo, a BS Computer Engineering student, said the team surveyed several convenience stores across Metro Manila to ensure that the simulation accurately represents the retail experience.
The retail sector, particularly the sari-sari store, which represents nearly 70 percent of manufactured goods sold in the Philippines, remains a largely unexplored territory for AI development because existing systems focus on household tasks.
The study added that through Sari Sandbox’s simulation environment, AI assistants can be developed for inventory management, store layout design, product placement optimization, customer service and supply chain optimization, technologies particularly valuable for the country’s 1.3 million sari-sari stores.
For his part, Sari Sandbox co-author Emmanuel Maminta, an AI PhD student, said their goal was to ‘build AI that can make smart, practical decisions that mirror human-level reasoning.’
‘By developing AI that can handle tasks like budgeting and grocery planning, tasks every Filipino knows well, we’re advancing practical AI solutions rooted in Filipino ingenuity,’ Maminta said.
UP president Angelo Jimenez said while the project’s recognition in the conference reflects the university’s growing prominence in AI research, it demonstrates how our researchers are leveraging Filipino cultural contexts to advance global scientific knowledge while addressing challenges directly relevant to our economy.