Brainstorming: Use Cases

One of the most exciting aspects of our project so far has been finding a niche to apply this technology. 3D video conferencing is great. We get to play with fun cameras, the Microsoft Kinect, and work with emerging web technologies such as webGL and webRTC. So what are we going to do with this?

We see a lot of applications of this technology in interactive live events: concerts, stage performances, sporting events. But the point of the Mozilla Ignite competition isn't how to best offer sports events streaming over the web (however mind-blowing that would be), it is how to leverage these ultra-fast networks and come up with applications which are beneficial to the country and will affect people. What we want to do is show everyone how this gigabit/programmable networking technology can change lives.

There is currently a huge push in the U.S. Educational system to promote the education and outreach of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, dubbed STEM. Our local university, UTC, has a full time STEM Outreach Coordinator, and Chattanooga is opening a new school geared entirely towards STEM. We believe that engage3D will be a powerful educational tool for both illustrating the power of new web technologies and a highly effective means of communicating educational material.

Enter the Nautilus

A week ago, Friday, Will Barkis  one of the program managers from Mozilla Ignite, landed us a conference call with some folks from The Oceans Exploration Trust. This is a very high profile group working with NOAA, National Geographic, the Sea Research Foundation, etc. All very established groups in research and educational outreach. They travel with the Nautilus, and give 5-7 video conferences A DAY to students all across the country. Take a minute and look through their websites to understand the magnitude of the projects they are involved in. Essentially, they take HD video and laser scans of famous shipwrecks and broadcast their findings all for STEM. 

This was such an amazing call and they showed a sincere desire to be involved with a 3D telepresence app, displaying interactive content from atop one of their ships. Their response to "would this be of value to you for your educational work?" was "OF COURSE!" I could go on and on about this, but I'd rather not jinx it... So we're going to pursue this relationship, and see if we could be of value to them in the future, once our application is more mature.

And, back to reality

Anyway, what I've taken from this conversation is that there are really valuable use cases for our engage3D project, especially in educadtion. Mozilla sees the value, The Oceans Exploration Trust sees the value, so we're going to gear this tool as an app used to give lectures or tutorials where 3D information is beneficial. We just pitched back to Mozilla last night for our next round of funding, and Will had many useful suggestions on building out our use case, such as looking at stereo 3D as well as the point clouds. I am also trying to find a way to justify the purchase of a small hologram projector... I think that we're in store for a lot of fun with this project in the upcoming months.