Visa RioPOOL, powered by Uber

On this project, I developed a multi-person augmented reality application for Visa and Uber's RioPOOL promotional event during the 2016 Rio Olympics.

The goal of this experience was to provide Visa and Uber memorable experiences that could be shared in promotional videos and on social media. This was a particularly time-sensitive activation. The activation consisted of a one-day primary activation in several cities worldwide including Dubai, New York, San Francisco, and, of course, Rio, with another week-long run in Rio, which included special events with Olympic athletes. During the experience Uber riders could request a special RioPOOL car. Installed in the back seat of these cars were a Surface Pro tablet, an Intel RealSense depth camera, and lighting. The tablet ran an application which was similar to snapchat filters. The user would select how many people were seated in the back then would then select a prop for each user. These props consisted mostly of sports-related hat and helmets as well as a few other sports items. The user would then record a short video and would be prompted to send a special code a facebook chat account. The account would then send the user the video they had just recorded after the video was uploaded to a central server.

This project was implemented using Unity and The Intel RealSense SDK. This project posed numerous technical challenges - rendering convincing augmented reality scenes, recording these scenes to video in real time, video post-processing, and reliably getting the completed videos out to the users. Additionally, the project faced some unexpected hurdles in an accelerated deployment schedule which dictated having to deploy the final version of the software in the field, often over very slow internet connections, and unforeseen hardware issue related to prolonged high-temperature environments. In the end, the deployment was a success and generated good press for both Visa and Uber.

Technologies Involved: Unity, C#, RealSense SDK, ffmpeg

Involved Parties:
Client - Visa
Management, design, production and asset creation - AKQA

Developed while employed at Stimulant