FüdRush

Talk to Alexa to find the food you'll love the most.

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Inspiration

We were sitting down as a group when we started to get pretty hungry. Dinner was long past, and we had no clue what to eat. We weren't from around here either, so we had no good way of knowing what we like. If only, we thought, there was some way to know.

What it does

FüdRush Integrates with Amazon Alexa, Yelp, and a special database to automatically help you find nearby food you'll like. As time goes on, the system learns your preferences, and is able to better recommend you places it knows you'll love. It keeps tabs on when you don't have a good experience, and remembers to be cautious when sending you similar places again.

How we built it

We built a web framework using node.js in order to host all the needed code, along with creating a front-end interface for our project. Our Amazon Echo Dot talks to Luis, in order to recognize voice commands. This also gives the system potential to easily expand to other platforms anytime. Once the voice command is recognized, we send a request to the Yelp API for restaurants nearby, and filter them to show you only the ones you'll enjoy the most.

Challenges we ran into

One of the more difficult parts of getting the system to work was setting up Luis. We needed to make sure that our system would understand pretty much anything you could ask it, and give you the proper thing back. Accounting for all these cases, and interfacing Luis with Alexa and Yelp proved to be our biggest challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

There was no greater thrill then when it all finally tied together, and we could sit back and ask Alexa for the best place to eat. We spent hours just giving it different queries, learning what there is around here, and using the feedback to refine our functions.

What we learned

We learned that getting many APIs to hook into each other, especially across different programming languages, can be difficult to pull off. If you're not careful, things can get messy. Luckily, the end result of utilizing the internet to its fullest was worth it.

What's next for FüdRush

Ideally, we'd like you to be able to use FudRush from anywhere, through texting and a messenger app on your phone. This would involve setting up Authentication and User Accounts. After that, the most important thing would be to improve the base our system uses for suggestions.

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