Location-Based Augmented Reality Gaming

Background

White Pony is a startup from Bayreuth that creates an Augmented Reality app called Eosis.
The app combines game with culture. Users can download routes for different cities and get navigated to important sights in the respective city. While navigating through a city, the user learns about the game's background story.
When reaching a sight, he/she experiences the actual Augmented Reality game, for example through fights. White Pony has received funding for concept and prototype development from the Bavarian "FilmFernsehFonds" and was among the winners of two German startup competitions, namely “start2grow” in Dortmund and the Bavarian “Businessplan-Wettbewerb Nordbayern”.

Research Projects

To evaluate prototype development, White Pony offers two research projects that can be worked on within a Bachelor/Master Thesis or a Master's Guided Research project.

1. The main challenges of the Eosis concept are to display Augmented Reality game elements (such as enemies and text boxes) and interact with them (for example in fights or puzzles) in a stable, high performance manner without using markers or optical tracking.
The first research project focuses on the identification of different ways to solve these challenges, followed by a basic implementation of the best solution.

2. Game engines, such as Unity, can be combined with different tools, such as Metaio's SDK, Qualcomm's Vuforia, or TUM's Ubitrack, to display Augmented Reality elements and to interact with them, but can also be used alone.
The second research project focuses on the identification of different tools to implement the location based display of and interaction with Augmented Reality game elements without using markers or optical tracking. The identified tools are evaluated based on different criteria, such as performance and stability.

Both projects are supervised by David A. Plecher. Joschka Mütterlein is White Pony's contact person.

Cooperation, Requirements & Application

White Pony offers deep insights into the project and close interaction with the startup's team. Communication is mostly online (Skype) and via project management tools (Trello).
All team members speak German and English fluently, so communication is possible in either language. Office presence is not required and working hours are flexible. Profound knowledge of C# is a must, as well as affinity to Augmented Reality gaming.
Please apply via mail to plecher@in.tum.de with a short letter of motivation to introduce yourself to the team.