yARp

Contextual information about things near you, displayed in augmented reality

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Inspiration

Develop an augmented reality application that would give users information about stores, restaurants, and events happening near by.

What it does

yARp will grab contextually aware information about the businesses, buildings, and other points of interest near by and display information about them when they enter a users frame of view. Information can include things such as restaurant reviews, menus, game schedules, and other relevant information to the user. yARp will pick up things from logos, to text, to (eventually) location-relevant POI's.

Currently this is being done through a phone interface but future iterations would see this ported to a smart glass-style device.

How I built it

This application was built as an Android application and primarily utilizes the Vuforia library for augmented reality, and Google Places API for information.

Challenges I ran into

This was my first application ever built using any form of Augmented Reality so the challenges I ran into were very numerous. Not having any experience with Unity really hindered me and I believe that was my most significant shortcoming. That being said I had to come up with several workarounds due to my inexperience with creating custom models and interfacing with the Unity engine directly. Also being on a team by myself was another serious shortcoming

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Despite having ZERO experience with augmented reality and unity, I still chose to take on this challenge knowing the tough road I had ahead of myself. I'm proud to say that I learned a significant amount and believe that I accomplished a significant amount in terms of development of the application despite being a one man team and having no experience.

I believe that exploring completely new technologies (for me) is what makes a hackathon so special so I am very proud that I branched out into uncomforatble/familiar territory

What I learned

Augmented Reality is difficult if you don't know Unity. If you do know Unity, or some other rendering engine, it can be fairly straight forward I also believe there are near limitless possibilities with augmented reality focused applications and I am excited to continue exploring this space

What's next for yARp

better(proper) AR implementations, virtual buttons, custom 3d models for previewing menu items!

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