Pokémon Go, but with real animals.
This was the inspired idea that earned Team YAMM 1st Prize for best use of NCRIS Australian environment datasets at the recent GovHack Hackerspace 2016. The top award included prize money provided by the National Computational Infrastructure.
Prompted by the success of Pokémon Go, Team YAMM saw a unique opportunity to connect people to the great outdoors using a combination of mobile technology and ecosystem data sourced from the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) and the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). The result was CRITRS, an augment reality mobile game.
Using a mixture of this open ecosystem data and geolocation technology, the game generates random 'encounters' with animals using augmented reality - by overlaying images of a particular animal on the real world. Players can 'capture' these animals, and learn more about them using the in-game encyclopedia. In this way, CRITRS allows people to better connect with their environment, and learn more about the ecosystem that they inhabit.
NCI is supported by The National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), a driver of research excellence and collaboration between 35,000 researchers, government and industry with the goal of delivering practical outcomes.
Well done, Team YAMM!
More information about the game can be found on this page.
