uSens Announces Winners of $200,000 ARVR App Developer Contest
Retail-geared app MonsterShop receives $50,000 grand prize for utilizing uSens Software Development Kit for Inside-Out Hand Tracking
At the Augmented World Expo (AWE) opening today in Silicon Valley, uSens, Inc. announced the winners of its U.S. regional uDev Challenge. Winning projects were selected from a pool of semifinalists, and determined by a panel of judges including analyst Jon Peddie, Samsung Research America director Chris Peri, Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Meetup founder Karl Krantz, and uSens executives. Project scores were based on several score categories, including use of the uSens Software Development Kit (SDK) for augmented and virtual reality applications. uSens’ SDK integrates the uSens Fingo module for 26DOF (degrees of freedom) hand tracking on mobile ARVR platforms as well as PC-based VR systems.
“We were impressed by the quality and creativity of the projects submitted by our semifinalists,” said Dr. Yue Fei, uSens CTO and co-founder. “Our winners integrated Fingo modules in imaginative ways and demonstrated the ability to make engaging, exciting use of our tracking technology to benefit end-users. I’m very pleased about the promise of future applications of our tracking tech.” Dr. Fei is speaking at AWE at 4:15 pm on June 2 on “4 Keys to Augmented Reality’s Future.”
A total of $200,000 in prizes were distributed amongst challenge entrants in the U.S. and China. These are the winners in the U.S.:
- Grand Prize: Developer Chris Wren won $50,000 for his application MonsterShop. The application delivers the framework for a VR retail experience by allowing players to customize the appearance of monster avatars via drag-and-drop hand gestures. For example, players can drag different colored eyeballs and facial hair onto the monsters.
- 2nd Prize: Developer Wallace Lages won $25,000 for Krinkle, a mobile action game that enables hand-activated spells. Players use motion gestures to shoot fire from their palms and form water balls.
- 3rd Prize: Developer Tom Leahy won $10,000 for Embodied Labs, an interactive medical training tool that lets users experience macular degeneration first-hand.
In the Chinese regional competition, winning titles included fighting games GestureMagic and Shadow Play, the self-explanatory Throwing Bomb Game, and electronic circuit assembly experience VR Electronics Laboratory.
All uDev Challenge submissions were made for Samsung Gear VR™, Google Cardboard™, HTC Vive™, or Oculus Rift™. Semifinalists developed their applications using the uSens SDK and an entry-level uSens Fingo module for adding 26DOF controller-free hand tracking.
The uSens Fingo series of modules offers advanced 3D human-computer interaction capability for both mobile and tethered systems. By attaching a Fingo to the front of a head-mounted display (HMD) device, end users can enjoy their favorite apps without major sacrifices to system power consumption or performance – even on mobile.
The uSens uDev Developer Network
uSens’s uDev network helps the developer community integrate the company’s tracking technology in their ARVR projects. uDev offers comprehensive developer kits and support for popular integrated development environments (IDEs) and work flows. uSens software currently supports Unity 3D, Unreal, Java, C++, and C# for mobile and PC developers, with more development environments to come. Request a developer kit or order a Fingo, shipping now within the U.S. and China for only $99.
