Project Aura originated in the wellbeing category by re-imagining indoor spaces. With Aura user can choose between real locations and virtual scenes. They can customize the environment by changing time, weather, audio or other settings to match their mood. It enables users to interact with the environment via motion tracking and attention monitoring.
The idea of the project derived from our research focusing on contemporary uses of TV's in house holds, such as creating ambiance and relaxing or studying without distracting content. We have looked into variety of precedents and built a case to improve existing experience by making it more dynamic and customizable.
Personal contributions to this project include 3D scene building, 2D image and scene design, user interface design, sound design, demo design, prototyping, software and hardware troubleshooting, presentation design and live demo runs.
user trends research
precedent studies
All 3D work has been done in Rhino and Unity. Software and hardware involved troubleshooting with custom AI tracking algorithms on RealSense cameras as well as variety of radars.
The UI design balanced within Samsung TV ecosystem offering elegant and functional layout. Original wireframes were prepared in Figma and tied into Unity scene with functional toggles and buttons affecting the environment.
One of the biggest challenges has been scaling of the application to run on Samsung Frame TV without additional graphics power units and hardware add-ons for the motion tracking. We have been able to resolve this by using multiplane images instead of full 3D scenes as well as adjusting our tracking to native radar tracking and detection, which significantly reduced graphics load and allowed the app to run on TV without additional compute power.
2.5D Multiplane Image Scene
3D Environment