Using Artificial Intelligence to Locate Immersive Media in the Real World

How does your mobile phone or device know where it is? GPS technology tells it the location on the surface of the earth where it is, lidar sensors or clever computer vision work out where the walls of the room are which surround it, but there is no technology to tell it what living things are also there. Our project uses AI to generate synthetic, but accurate, biomes which can tell a game or an educational app which organic creatures it shares a space with.

We are working with leading academics from the Universities of Bristol and Birmingham to create a cutting edge technology which will be able to predict the likelihood of a given species being present at any given place in the UK and, eventually, the world. This will have valuable applications to mobile games, educational apps and conservation planning.

As a proof of concept, we will be building a simple collection and matching game on top of the AI technology. We're calling this Lupa and the cool thing is that to collect, all you need do is walk somewhere. No need to use a camera to pick plants or animals, the app does it for you.