Spacebot

An AR-powered chatbot. Play games & learn about space!

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Inspiration

The theme for this hackathon really stumped me. I didn't have a clue of what to build. I decided to build a space-related hack that also let me "fill a space". I thought of hangman - a game where you fill spaces when you make a turn until you either win or lose. I also thought of AR - an emerging technology in which you fill a physical "real" space with a digital overlay. I brought these ideas together to form Spacebot - an AR powered chatbot that helps it's users learn more about space using AR. As a bonus, there is a Wordle-style game embedded in which users can play a once-daily game of hangman to try to guess the title of the image.

What it does

These are the main functionalities:

  • WhatsApp chatbot that can answer questions and provide helpful links and experiences.
  • Built out AR experiences to help people understand the scale and "space" of space much better.
  • Build a Wordle-style game that lets players play a once-daily game of hangman and also see a once-daily new picture about space!

How I built it

I used JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3 to build the front-end user-interface. I chose this method because it is easily deployable with GitHub pages for free. For the back-end, I chose the Python framework Flask because I wanted to get up and running quickly. I also chose it because it is easy to deploy on the cloud with a service like DigitalOcean. I used the Twilio API to create the WhatsApp functionality to test. I also used Reality Composer and Adobe Aero to build the AR component of the project.

Challenges we ran into

First of all because of weather conditions, I lost power for several hours meaning I didn't get the full time period of the competition. I also had zero experience in making chatbots. I also never had experimented with AR so that also took a long time to get running. Lastly, I was working on several ideas at once (3d game, data science project) which also ate up a lot of my time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud that I completed and deployed the app. I am proud that it is fully functional and does exactly what I had initially set out to do. I'm proud that it's a fun project that hopefully brings a smile to someone's face!

What I learned

I learned how to build a WhatsApp chatbot and create a microservice to add functionality to it. I learned how to deploy an AR service and how to tie everything together to form a cohesive project.

What's next for Spacebot

Currently Spacebot only has one game. I had a very ambitious idea for another game but obviously I could not create it within the time constraints of this hackathon. I wanted to create a Microsoft Flight Simulator clone but for space. Meaning, I wanted to create a spacecraft that would be able to fly around in 3D in space and have realistic (sped up of course) journey times between planets and asteroids. This would be the second playable game, and it would hit home the size and "space" of space.

Here are the AR demos:

How Big the Sun is in comparison to the planets: https://youtu.be/yAUR32ME49o How Much Bigger Jupiter is: https://youtu.be/SqV0QngJA7Q How Only One Side of the Moon Always Faces the Earth: https://youtu.be/iFnUjH0Z2E0 Planets Revolution Relative Speeds: https://youtu.be/hUUpnNtDugU Scaled Distance Between the Earth and the Moon: https://youtu.be/a1PPU42nr9E

Space Hangman Demo: https://youtu.be/p3nXSiVSdWE

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