Inspiration
In 2019, British researchers discovered that a startling number of children and teens were unable to identify common plants and animals. Moreover, according to NCLI Coalition, most American children can identify over 1000 corporate logos but less than 10 native plants. These facts are reflect an ever-apparent trend amongst today’s youth to have an extremely sedentary lifestyle, characterized by long hours using electronic devices and less time spent outside than previous generations. This change in lifestyle has been strongly linked to many adverse physical and developmental effects including obesity, poor vision, heart disease, depression, and social anxiety and antisocial behavior. The truth, however, is that most children (and adults) find the appeal of a good YouTube video or phone game far too irresistible to spend time exercising healthier habits. We decided we need to build a product that gives healthy outdoor hobbies a modern twist, and incentivizes users to spend more time outdoors and learn about the majestic wildlife that surrounds them.
What it does
Vera is an app that features an AI-powered plant classifier that can classify up to 33,000 individual plant species by their scientific name. The app stores and records plants the user has found and assigns points to their profile for each new species they photograph. The app has an enticing game-like achievement and score system while also being educational through the fun facts and description page available for each species. This motivates people to familiarize themselves within nature around them. In fact, through the making of this product, our team members have learned the names of several the plant species around UCLA.
How we built it
We created Vera with a front-end comprised of React Native & Expo Go, a back-end comprised of a Node.js & Express.js web HTTPS server, Firebase as our database to store user and flora data, and several Web REST APIs for plant picture identification and information.
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