The Augmented World Expo (AWE) played host to a number of announcements today including, amongst others the reveal by VR tracking specialists uSens of the winners uDev Challenge for America. This followed a sister competition in China.
The projects, which required use of uSens’ own Software Development Kit (SDK) for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) and could utilize either the Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard, HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift. And were initially narrowed down to a selection of semi-finalists by a judging panel consisting of members of the uSens, Samsung and the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Meetup group.
“We were impressed by the quality and creativity of the projects submitted by our semifinalists.” Explained uSens CTO and company co-founder Dr. Yue Fei . “Our winners integrated Fingo modules,” uSens’s tracking device, which recently received an upgrade, “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.”
$50,000 (USD) was won by the grand prize winner, Chris Wren who developed MonsterShop an application for VR retail.
Wallace Lages came in second for spellcasting mobile game Krinkle VR, netting the developer $25,000 (USD).
Third place was won by a medical related tool called Embodied Labs developed by Tom Leahy. Which shows the degeneration of the macular, a very small but important part of the retina. It’s a condition that results in people losing their central vision.
The US prizes bring the total amount awarded across both challenges to $200,000. VRFocus will bring you more news from AWE 2017 throughout the week.