LiDarLink

LiDarLink is a marketplace for designers to virtually interact with client's 3d surroundings and express their creativity from anywhere! LiDarLink uses LiDar technology to create 3D environments.

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Inspiration

LiDar technology has become readily available through its incorporation in newer phones such as iPhone 12-15 Pros. This technology's current uses for everyday users are far from their potential. LiDarLink aims to change this.

What it does

LiDarLink is an app that allows users to scan 3D environment around them in minutes and pay designers to redesign their environment to fit their real-world needs. Since the output files of LiDarLink are .obj, .ply, and .usdz, they can immediately be accessed through software such as Blender and CAD to be redesigned with other true-scale models. Because of the need to have a payment system, we ultimately decided to create a marketplace within the app where designers can bid on how much they want to get payed on projects posted by users.

How we built it

We built this app on SwiftUI as LiDar sensors are far more common on iOS based devices than Android counterparts. In order to support real-time 3D environment creation, we used Apple's own Room Plan API which combined visuals from the camera and LiDar sensor to create a textured mesh of the real world. We also were able to integrate Cloud Storage in the form of AWS S3 through their APIs and endpoints to ensure functionality of the marketplace.

Challenges we ran into

Initially, we were leaning away from Apple Room Sense because of its lack of other useful features such as depth maps and confidence metrics, but after researching other solutions, we found it to be the most optimized for mobile computing. The other solutions also required higher performance cloud computing for diminishing returns over Apple's own offerings. We were able to recreate better textures by mapping color through the rear camera and translating that to the point clouds created by the LiDar cameras.

What we learned and Achievements

36 hours ago, our team had 0 prior experience with LiDar technology or building iOS apps through Swift. With a lot of food and energy drinks, we learned how to utilize both of these together to get the best out of both. We truly are proud of the project we created during HackGT and will continue working on this newfound interest for a long time.

What's next for LiDarLink

LiDarLink is still far from being a fully functional, feature-packed marketplace we envision it to be. We want to expand this LiDar technology marketplace to other user groups besides designers. For example, retailers having access to this technology to map out fully assembled furniture and providing this to consumers would allow prospective consumers to place it in their own environment through AR and make more informed purchasing decisions. The entire team has committed at least the next 6 months to further developing these ideas to best utilize LiDar technology.

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