JupiTeam | Looking GLOBE-ally
The Challenge | Looking GLOBE-ally
Jupi - your alien buddy
Jupi is a game that tells the history of a friendly alien that needs your help to explore the earth! It innovates in engaging users in activities that involves investigation and data collection about the world around them.
Our project has the objective of bringing to children knowledge and interest about the universe we live in. We also want to enable them to collaborate with us in populating the GLOBE platform with some very useful data about their surroundings.
To achieve this goal we have created a character named Jupi, he is a very friendly alien that comes from Jupiter! His purpose is to engage children in interesting and entertaining activities.
Our project comprises the development of an web app that can be used to interact with Jupi. In these interactions Jupi will be able to give out some scientific information relevant to the story he is telling, presented in a didactic way. This information is mostly based on the information available in the Nasa Knows platform, but data available from other platforms such as Worldview, Earthdata and Picture of the Day API will also be used to illustrate different subjects. Jupi will also be able to give out tasks, that usually require some investigation about the environment. These tasks will usually result in the collection of some data about their surroundings, and this will be handled and supplied to the GLOBE platform.
The visuals of the application were created thinking about evoking a playful atmosphere that can be attractive to everyone. Our main character, Jupi, was an entirely original creation from our team, created using Adobe Illustrator, to be able to deliver our own visual identity. However, as a mean of cutting development time during the hackathon, images available from free online image archives were used during the creation of some of the secondary assets.
The application is being developed based on web framework Ruby on Rails and Javascript using the most agile web technologies.Ruby on Rails help us to build and maintain modern web applications. One of the main means of interaction is through sending photos to solve the tasks given by Jupi, for processing them we will use the advanced Google Vision API, with the goal of interpreting to give appropriate answers, as well as filtering and prevent any inadequate pictures from being sent to the platform.
These tasks will be handled with a mission and reward system used to motivate their completion. Users will be rewarded coins upon completion of each tasks, and these coins can be later used to acquire gear for the avatars as well as unlocking badges to show their progress in the adventure.
There will be mainly three different types of activities. The main one a more diversified task that is used to present the information from the Nasa Knows platform, it will be a daily task that the user can complete, where Jupi will ask questions but also bring a new piece of information every time, it will also be used to tell a story about the adventures of Jupi. Another activity are some minor tasks related to taking care of Jupi, such as feeding him and giving him environmental information. At last the NASA Picture of the Day API will also be used to show a new curious and informative picture on a daily basis.
The future of mankind is in the hands of the children, and the eyes of Jupi will be the eyes of the children of the world.
SpaceApps is a NASA incubator innovation program.