PolAR

Inspiration

“The Canadian Polar Bear Habitat is known around the world for its polar bear research and education. However, its remote location limits the number of students, teachers, and life-long learners that it can reach.”

What better way to counter this obstacle by bringing the Habitat to your very home? With Kurius’ sponsorship by echoAR, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to dive into the world of virtual experiences.

What it does

Upon immersion into our virtual gallery, users are able to see and learn more about the four beloved stars of the Habitat: Ganuk, Eddy, Henry, and Inukshuk. As users explore the gallery, the four polar bears will move among them.

How we built it

First, we tried to find realistic 3D polar bear models that we could upload echoAR’s platform. We also uploaded images of Ganuk, Eddy, Henry, and Inukshuk to echoAR. Then, using Unity, we manipulated the models and images and correspond to our vision of the gallery.

Challenges we ran into

We had trouble running some of echoAR’s demonstrations. We had hoped to create portals through which a user could watch the Habitat’s enclosure live streams, but we were not able to make it work with a 2D video. We also had trouble running the application on our personal devices when there were multiple models in the scene.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

We are proud of succeeding in using new platforms and developer tools such as echoAR and Unity.

What we learned

We learned more about programming in C# and matrix transformations. Furthermore, we learned how to coordinate remotely as a team on an AR project.

What’s next for PolAR

In the future, we are considering implementing more robust AR and portals in our virtual gallery. We would also like to overcome the challenges we were not able to during this Hackathon. Here’s to users being able to step into the Canadian Polar Habitat and explore from home!