Inspiration
I recently took a trip to Europe where I was presented with many historical sites and attractions. The problem is that I don't know history very well... This led me to create DiscoverAR so that I can understand exactly what I am looking at by simply pointing my phone at it.
What it does
DiscoverAR is an application that unveils the worlds wonders through augmented reality. Our mission is to revolutionize the way that people interact with their surroundings by blending the digital and physical worlds together. DiscoverAR is very simple to use, just point your phone at a landmarks, attractions, businesses, restaurants, etc. From there you are able to see an icon generated over the landmark. You can interact with this icon by tapping it on the screen. This brings up a variety of information including the name, ratings, number of ratings, currently open, website, and directions. It also brings up an icon to be able to talk to your AI assistant. You are able to ask questions to it about this specific object or the general area.
How we built it
Upon Initializing, DiscoverAR makes a query to the Google Maps API for the closest 20 items in proximity. It returns back a variety of information including the coordinates, name, and id. These coordinates are used to place an icon in the AR scene as a Geospatial Creator Anchor. Upon clicking on the icon we utilize that id to be able to make another query for additional information on this landmark. This returns ratings, currently open, website, directions, etc. It also brings up an AI chat button. When the user clicks this button, we utilize prompt engineering to tell the Google Palm API to be a tour guide and which city it is in and what landmark we just clicked on in addition to the user prompt.
Challenges we ran into
There were no short of challenges, one of which is that I found out about this competition just over a month ago. This time frame made for a lot of late nights when building. In addition, I spent a lot of time refinining the prompt engineering on the Palm API to get the exact result that I was wanting.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
DiscoverAR acts as the interface to two massive Google products, Maps and Palm in addition to overlaying all of that information in an AR view.
What we learned
This was the first mobile app that I had built on Unity so there was a lot to learn in the space of UI. It was also the first time using Geospatial and all of it's capabilities, I learned how to utilize Google API to be able to create Geospatial objects.
What's next for DiscoverAR
- Implement more icons based on what type of landmark it is.
- Make it accesible to IOS.
- Make an interface to social media apps so that you can easily share what you interacted with.
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