Our Sustainable Solar System

Inspiration

A member of our team had previously worked with utilizing web 3 / metaverse technology, such as AR, to improve pedagogical models in order to facilitate communication / education between professors, med students, healthcare workers, and the general public / patients, in order to enhance their understanding of disease pathology and anatomy. We wanted to take this knowledge and bring it to another demographic (younger children) since many of us have younger siblings at home. The goal was to create something both educational and fun for them.

What it does

Users can utilize Merge Cube’s ObjectViewer app to get a model of the solar system in AR. They can interact with the model by dragging, zooming in, and clicking on each planet to get information and facts about it.

How we built it

We first researched the relative dimensions of the planets and then found textures corresponding to them and made CAD models in Fusion 360. We then took these models and put them into the same file. We then uploaded these files into Merge Cube.

Challenges we ran into

We had some difficulties with model compatibility between different platforms. We made textures with vibrant color schemes planets in Fusion 360 but many platforms did not support these files. While the AR platforms we used supported obj and fbx files, these files did not support the color and texture of the models, and while usdz files did, the platforms did not. We were still able to import our planets to these platforms but they did not have the textures and colors we originally included. We also did not have the pro versions of the platforms we were using and thus we were not able to access critical features such as animation and quizzes. Another small limitation we ran into was not being able to make the planets relative in size to the sun. We were unable to make the planets exactly to scale since they would be too tiny to see in comparison to the sun.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to utilize Fusion 360 to build models of all the planets, asteroids, space debris, and satellites while making them look very realistic.

What we learned

We learned how to delegate roles so that everybody had an important role, despite their skill sets. Additionally, we learned some interesting facts about the solar system that we didn’t already learn in school while researching for this project.

What's next for Our Sustainable Solar System

We hope to make Our Sustainable Solar System easily accessible to parents to educate their children about the solar system in a fun and interactive way!