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But our winner? An innovative idea we haven’t heard before, with a heck of a claim: AR can help save the planet. Congratulations PAN Project, you guys are getting a free Wikitude SDK!
Meet the PAN Project
If you happened to drop by Albert-Einstein-Strasse in Osnabrück, Germany, you might not be surprised to find some pretty smart people, who happen to be the winner of our 2016 Wikitude SDK Giveaway.
They’re the brains behind the PAN project – an augmented reality-powered, mobile-app based platform to crowdsource the monitoring of environmental changes. What? It’s simpler than it sounds – let us explain.
In today’s digital world, things often move too fast for us to see – the environment works the other way. It’s too slow – and continuous monitoring on a large scale is different. That’s where the power of crowds come in. Using an AR-app as a how-to aid, anyone can go out and engage in ‘citizen science’ – and it’s simple. Find the right spot, take a picture. See the 15-second demo below.
For Matthias Temmen – one of the heads behind the project – it’s not just the science, it’s raising awareness and getting people outside. “We encourage people who are not very interested in environmental care to engage their local and regional landscapes, think about their protection and understand natural change processes,” he says. It’s all about mobilizing and engaging a broad selection of citizens. He continues: “Citizens interested in nature, environmental protection or science, plus tourists, hikers, cyclists, school classes and study groups are enabled by the PAN app to navigate to various points of interest with GPS and AR to take photos from the same location and perspective over a long period of time.”
The ultimate goal, of course, is to raise environmental awareness and see how the natural world is changing right before our very eyes.
How will our SDK help save the planet?
Our technology makes their app work. “Geo-based AR is the core of this project. The users have to be directed to the place where they should photograph with ease and fun without thinking about the underlying technology.” But access to everything the Wikitude SDK will hopefully give them the opportunity to improve that experience even more. “Due to the intrinsic uncertainty of GPS and magnetometer we’re eager to experiment with the new 3D Tracking feature to enhance the reproducibility of the taken images!”
And the best part of them – it makes their job easier, and lets them focus on the features and functionality of their app. “Writing high accuracy and reliable AR code is a complex task which take a significant amount of time and skill,” says Temmen. “The Wikitude SDK provides the state of the art way of a ready to use AR framework on multiple platforms which unleashes its power out of the box. So why reinvent the wheel? The combination of various solutions is truly amazing and pays back immediately!”
All in all, we here at Wikitude couldn’t be more happy with the winner of our annual license giveaway – we’re really looking forward to seeing how the PAN project can save the world. And as the for the guy building a time machine… let us know when it’s time to go back to the future.
