LocoMate – Move Without Stress

🚀 Inspiration

Moving to a new place is overwhelming. Finding a gym, grocery store, or even a café that feels right takes time. As international students, we’ve experienced this anxiety firsthand—relocating for studies, internships, or jobs.

With LocoMate, we wanted to create a personalized, privacy-focused guide to help people feel at home instantly in a new city. No more spending hours scrolling through Google and Yelp—LocoMate simplifies everything.

🌍 What It Does

LocoMate is your one-stop personalized moving companion that helps you:
✅ Find essential services – Gyms, grocery stores, salons, restaurants, and more.
✅ Get recommendations tailored to your lifestyle – Based on your past habits.
✅ Visualize places on an interactive map – See what’s near you based on your preferred transportation method.
✅ Stay private – We process Google Takeout data but never store it.
✅ Chat with our AI assistant – Ask questions, get real-time recommendations, or even share your location for safety.
✅ Plan your day easily – Create an itinerary and get a budget estimate for your trips.

🛠 How It Works

Step 1: Getting Started

Open LocoMate and go through a quick tutorial.
Learn how to export your Google Takeout data (we guide you step by step).

Step 2: Upload Your Data

Browse and upload your Google Takeout location history file.
Enter the new city/state you’ve moved to.
Add optional preferences (e.g., quiet study spots, fine dining, shopping, budget limits).

Step 3: Choose Your Transportation Mode

Select how you plan to get around (walking, biking, public transport, or car).
Define the area you want to explore based on your commute.
See a visual map of your reachability.

Step 4: Get Personalized Suggestions

LocoMate analyzes your preferences and past habits to recommend places.
You can filter locations (restaurants, tourist attractions, gyms, libraries, etc.).
View results on an interactive city map—pin places and plan visits.
Choose to read recommendations in list form or visual cubes.

Step 5: Talk to Our AI Chatbot

Ask for real-time recommendations and hear responses.
Live location sharing for safety if you ever feel unsafe.
Image upload for real-time explanations—get instant insights.

Step 6: Create an Itinerary & Budget Plan

Select places to visit and add them to your itinerary.
Get an estimated budget based on high, mid, or low spending preferences.
Our AI auto-generates a schedule so your travel doesn’t feel overwhelming.

⚡ Challenges We Ran Into

Balancing personalization & privacy – Tailoring recommendations without storing user data.
Simplifying Google Takeout data – Making it easy for users to upload and extract meaningful insights.
Designing an intuitive UI/UX – Ensuring a stress-free experience for non-technical users.

🎉 Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

✅ Successfully built a privacy-first recommendation system.
✅ Created a seamless UI/UX that makes moving less stressful.
✅ Integrated real-time AI assistance and itinerary planning to enhance user experience.

📚 What We Learned

Privacy matters – Users want personalization without sacrificing security.
Recommendation algorithms need balance – Too much information overwhelms people; simplicity is key.
User onboarding is crucial – Making Google Takeout easy to use improves adoption.

🚀 What's Next for LocoMate

🔹 Expand recommendations – Add doctors, co-working spaces, and local community groups.
🔹 Collaborative filtering – Suggest places based on similar users’ preferences.
🔹 Develop a mobile app – For easier access on the go.
🔹 AI-powered smart recommendations – Refine our algorithm to make even better suggestions.

🔧 Tech Stack

Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript for an intuitive UI.
Backend: Flask for data processing.
APIs Used: Gemini AI, Google Maps API for accurate recommendations.
ML: Sentence Transformers for embedding-based similarity search to match user preferences with nearby places.