Discovery AR

Inspiration

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many people are stuck at home, trying to entertain themselves. Some wanted to go out into the world to sightsee many wonders and famous monuments but are not able to due to fear of risking both their loved ones and themselves with this virus. This application is a solution to that problem.

What it does

The application takes an image of a famous place like Space Needle, Empire State Building, and Eiffel Tower, in any angle, and will locate the longitude and latitude of that famous place. The application will give you a summarized history of that place, as well as give you a link for more information. It also gives you an AR model of the place with the ability to move, shrink, and scale the place around your room.

How I built it

For the backend of this application, we used python to have a landscape detection algorithm to figure out if the image (jpg, png, and jpeg) contains a famous monument. We also used javascript for the website to send the image to. We used Bubble IO to create a design for the website while using Echo AR to create a 3D model of the famous monuments.

Challenges I ran into

There were several setbacks and unexpected obstacles that occurred during the creation of this application. Some of these obstacles were trying to bridge the different programming languages to flow seamlessly with one another, how we can get the data from the detection algorithm to go to the Echo AR’s models, or how we can expect our users to interact with the object like pulling up its basic information.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

When we were designing the layout of the application, we thought we could simply connect multiple different languages together and form a coherent system, or we overestimated the capabilities of the software tools that we planned to use. The biggest accomplishment that we, as a team, did was our adaptability to these unexpected challenges and obstacles. We come up with many ideas that could work around the problems that we encountered during the creation of this application. We effectively communicated with one another when these problems occurred to help each other.

What I learned

We learned how to collaborate with each other online and how to connect different technologies/software together. We also learned how to problem solve as a group and pivot when our original plans to turn out to not work out the way we initially envisioned. Lastly, we learned how to maintain optimism throughout the ups and downs of projects like these.