The augmented reality educational app rocks at the aviation hackathon
During last weekend of April, Lithuania’s Vilnius Tech Park hosted the second hackathon. The participants from Lithuania, Tajikistan, Russia and Belarus presented their technology ideas for the aviation and travel industries. Among the solutions — a system, which plans trips around the world, a cargo air transport reservations platform and an augmented reality app.
The team DreamBIG, which created a prototype of an augmented reality educational app, became the winner of the hackathon.
The app will help passengers to learn more about the plane, its parts and safety instructions by showing animations and interactive puzzles on their smartphones. In addition, the app also features different thematic filters, which allow to take portrait pictures with elements of augmented reality.
According to the creators, this educational app will be attractive not only for kids, but also for adults, willing to kill boredom during the flight.
The winners received 3000 EUR cash prize, provided by App in the Air, and 3-month membership at Vilnius Tech Park with an opportunity to continue development of their business with help of experts from different fields. If the team reaches the set KPIs, accelerator Startup Highway will be ready to provide primary investment for further development.
In total 8 business ideas were presented during Hacker Games Pro: Aviation.
Eightydays.me
Startup called Eightydays.me, which came from Belarus to the contest, continued the development their own platform. Currently the Eightydays.me system allows its users to plan trips in few clicks around Europe and North America. However, during the hackathon, the team came up with a new goal — to create an option to plan trips around the world.
Even though the new system is not fully functional yet, the team has already counted that it will be possible to visit 10 different cities around the globe with a budget of 1500 $, including accommodation costs. Creators of Eightydays.me plan to launch this feature on their platform until the end of May.
Petras
One more travel planning tool was presented by a team of two programmers from Alna Software. An interesting fact: both of them took part in the Hacker Games Pro: Open Data hackathon in March. During the aviation hackathon, the duet presented a platform, which can help to create a personal travel plan with a sounding name Petras (a.k.a. Personal Travel Assistant). According to the creators, the platform could analyze not just the personal data of its users, but also the hobbies and interests to create a personal holiday plan and help to save valuable time. Each time the user uses the platform, the system would learn and develop even more suited plans.
AirTrans
The aviation hackathon was also remarkable because of its diversity. Among other participants of the hackathon, there were 4 young guys from Tajikistan. Currently, they are studying at Kaunas Technology University. Their idea is quite interesting — an e-platform called AirTrans, which would allow to cooperate the parcel delivery and airline companies. The system would allow not just to find the parcel delivery partner, but also to compare the service packages of different companies and to choose the best offer depending on price. According to the creators of this idea, their business model would be based on the subscription model: the service would cost 109 EUR for 3 months of usage. According to the team, they will keep working on this prototype and develop it to become a fully functional product.
5 Clicks Adventure
Next team, which only had one member Domantas Petrauskas, wants to give an opportunity to go on holidays cheaply. However, there is a catch: users will know the destination only after the payment. According to Domantas, who is studying aircraft piloting (and programs during his free time), the user could choose one of the package options: “Basic” (which would include one way ticket) or “Premium” (which would include a round trip and accommodation). When the user chooses the package, the platform automatically generates the trip offer, which could be a great surprise.
Domantas Petrauskas received a prize from startup App in the Air for his ambition to continue working without additional team members and to present the prototype of 5 Clicks Adventure to the jury. In addition, he received a 3-month free membership at Vilnius Tech Park coworking space.
Wherever.world
Team Wherever.world has proposed a similar idea — an e-platform, which would sell flight tickets with an unknown destination. According to the authors of this idea, all trips would have a fixed price — 50 EUR. The user will know the destination only 24 hours before flight, on the arrival to the airport. The business model of this idea is based on the last-minute deals.
Solo Traveler
Those who are traveling alone, but don’t like the boredom during the flight, would like the idea of the team Solo Traveler — a service, which would allow to choose a seat near other passengers based on their interests or profession. On the other hand, if the passenger prefers not to talk to others and loves quietness, he or she would be able to choose the quite zone in the plane. According to the authors, the Solo Traveler system would be integrated in the website of the airline companies and the information of passengers profile would be gathered from Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.
Solo Traveler team believes that their system could help to solve several problems: improve the specific communication needs of passengers during the flight, help to provide the quiet atmosphere for those who want to fly quietly and improve a public image of airline companies.
Less Boring
The last team named Less Boring presented an idea, which is also based on AR and would help to fight boredom. According to the representative of the team, the app would show the places, which would be under the plane in real time, and interesting facts about them. Additionally, this platform would have a chat function, which would allow the passengers to chat during the flight.
The second Hacker Games Pro event was dedicated to the aviation and travel planning technologies. Small Planet Airlines and startup App in the Air, which has more than 2.5 million users worldwide already, provided various data for the participants of the hackathon.
Vilnius Tech Park’s director Darius Zakaitis is convinced that Hacker Games Pro project is beneficial for the country’s business ecosystem. “I truly believe that every person, who came to our event, had an opportunity not just to develop his or her business idea, but also to learn from other participants. Addition value was created by industry experts, who read presentations about the aviation industry and consulted participants throughout the event. This is the best way to try out your skills and make first steps towards your own business. Secondly, this is a great way for enterprises to encourage their employees to develop new ideas and find out their hidden talents”, says Mr. Zakaitis.
According to him, teams only had 48 hours to create a prototype of their business idea and present it to the jury: “This event has proved that you don’t need several months to develop a business project — you just need a motivated team and a few days.”
The participants of the event had a chance to develop their own business ideas or to create mixed teams with the specialists from Small Planet Airlines.
The hackathon Hacker Games Pro was organized by Vilnius Tech Park and Startup Lithuania. The main goal of this project is to encourage cooperation between enterprises and startups and to allow the experts of different fields to contribute to the development of new business ideas.
This year, Vilnius Tech Park plans to host at least two more hackathons, focused on different sectors of innovation, which would unite start-ups, innovation enthusiasts and large companies.
