Travel Guide

Inspiration

Having an app that helps tourists both navigate and learn a language while visiting anoher country is useful.

What it does

The intelligent travel companion provides translations and facts for tourists exploring in another country. Inputs for translations can be either text or speech, so tourists don't have to be stuck on screens while walking. The output shows how to pronounce the message and has buttons to demonstrate out loud, and the user can test their pronunciation too. There are directions to landmarks and facts will be shown when they are reached on the tour.

How we built it

We split the project into 2 parts and worked on each separately first, then joined them together at the end. The parts were: Languages (learning words and pronunciation), and Narration of Walking Tours (map of places with history/culture facts). We used ElevenLabs for narration and text-to-speech features, Gemini for generating facts, Google maps for location, and Solana for speed and scalability. The webapp is in HTML with Javascript and CSS files linked to give it the functionality through APIs. When we weren't sure about the code or when there were errors, we asked Chat-GPT.

Challenges we ran into

The mic inputs did not always work, with nothing being captured initially. The AI tools sometimes did not work as expected with our app, such as with the map and directions. Using APIs and combining the project at the end was also difficult because some aspects did not fit together and it took a while until everything was working again.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The webapp has the basic functionalities we aimed for such as text-to-speech and the map with generated facts. It also checks pronunciation of inputs and has a GUI. We got past the challenges of integrating everything together.

What we learned

We learnt how to use ElevenLabs and Gemini APIs. We learnt about multiple APIs across the project for different features.

What's next for Travel Voice Companion

Expanding features for more countries so the travel companion can be used by tourists everywhere. Additionally, there are still some bugs with the audio, and these would be fixed with further development.

Built With

• css
• elevenlabs
• geminiapi
• html
• javascript
• python
• solana