rvk2do

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Inspiration

We began by thinking about our own experiences as tourists in foreign countries. We all had similar stories to tell where a platform for events and sights would have come in handy in unfamiliar place. We started out with the idea of one single platform that would give you information about events that were happening today and sights to see around Reykjavik.

What it does

The idea evolved into a platform that tourists can access online, in app or in our proposed touchscreen hubs located throughout the capital where our machine learning viking tour guide, Thor, helps prepare personalized trips for each user. He can recommend events or places to visit based on the user's interests. The platform will be able to organize trips that would be plausible time- and price-wise. It would include a connection to public transport so that Thor could give you real-time notifications on when to move on to the next destination. It has an interactive app so that you can see events close to your location and get directions straight away. Organizer will be able to add their own events to the platform.

For example, say you're interested in seeing live music tonight. All you'd need to do is ask Thor and he would show you all the concerts that are happening tonight. Out of those he would suggest a "trip" where you could perhaps see a band at one venue at 8pm, another one at 10pm, the third one at 11pm and suggest transportation methods.

How we built it

The back end was built using node.js and hosted our Mongodb database in the Microsoft Azure cloud. We also hosted our application using Microsoft Azure. We used a Google API to gain map functionality for our interactive map feature where you are able to see everything that's happening close by. We used Azure's Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) to implement the machine learning chatbot Thor.

Challenges we ran into

We had some difficulty getting the machine learning chatbot to work since the technology is quite complex.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud of Thor, the viking tour guide, which uses machine learning to predict which events or places would suit the user the best based on their messages. The interactive map is something we all felt was missing, so this would be something we would all use on a weekly basis.

What we learned

We realized that there is definitely a need for such a platform since the current ones quite small and specific, for example a similar website for official events hosted by the city of Reykjavik.

What's next for rvk2do

We would like to add a voice recognition feature so that you could speak to Thor. An idea for monetizing would be to have advertisements on the touchscreens when they are not in use.

Built With

• azure
• css3
• html5
• javascript
• mongodb
• node.js