WaterWays Tour

App Icon
App Trivia
Voice Selection

Inspiration

Philadelphia is the city that is defined by the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, which has drawn thousand of rowers, kayakers, tourist and history enthusiasts every year. However, these people would follow a traditional guides that are static and also expensive, which would leave many to navigate these waterways without having discovering the rich industrial, ecological and the cultural history around them.

We wanted to create an interactive platform that would connect technology with Philadelphia vibrant aquatic environment which would offer the user an immersive experience that is led by an AI guide.

What it does

Our platform would allow the users to select their current or a desired location and instantly generates a personalized audio route based on their exact GPS coordinates. With the power of ElevenLabs API, our AI otter mascot would speak directly to the users, and narrating interesting details, historical context and the ecological facts about what they might see when traveling along the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers in real time environment.

How we built it

We have built the application that would combine front-end mapping, generative AI, and a real time voice synthesis. Using Gemini, we would generate a custom script that would tailored to the specific checkpoint along the rivers. We would then passed the scripts to the ElevenLabs API to render a more natural and engaging voice audio for our team otter mascot. The front end would manages the location targeting and map routing, using the custom audio checkpoints smoothly for the user. Lastly, we would utilized Claude throughout the building process to write code, design feature and debug the issues that we would come across.

Challenge we ran into

Our primary technical challenge was the deployment across mobile operating systems. While we have successfully configured, deployed and has ran our live demo on IOS device, we would encountered a platform compatibility issues when attempt to run and test the program on an Android devices.

What we learned

We gained a hands on experience navigating the full software development life cycle. Moving from initial planning, implementing the feature, doing rigorous testing and a frustrating debugging session. Additionally, we gained an understanding of the value of generative AI tools like Claude during development. Whenever we would hit a technical difficulties, AI would assisted us with what the problems is and giving us insight on how to deal with its.

What's next for OwlHacks 2026

Our immediate next step is to able to run and test our program on a Android platform. We wanted our user to have a wonderful cross platform experience while using our platform. Beyond just mobile parity, in the future, we plan to introduce gamified concept such as location trigged interactive trivia and a river scavenger hunts to turn every trip down the Schuylkill and Delaware river into an engaging and fun adventure.