TEAM NOBBO| Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History

Awards & Nominations

TEAM NOBBO has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History

NASA’s activities in space have brought new knowledge of the Earth, inspiring new ways of thinking about humanity and the planet. However, many people aren’t aware that NASA studies the Earth in addition to other planets. Your challenge is to tell stories of NASA’s Earth science enterprise using interactive digital tools. This will test your technical skills and your ability to think like a historian or educator.

EXPLORO

Summary

EXPLORO is a game to present NASA's earth and other awesome data in a very fun and interactive way and to make it accessible to people we added both normal and VR mode. In the VR mode, it can be played in a commercial VR setup. But everyone can not afford a commercial VR setup so we developed our own VR setup.It is made of very cheap and easily available components. Anyone can easily make it and play the game in VR mode .We added a very special feature too, we added a magnetic actuator vibrator matrix which will be placed on our hand palm so we will feel the thing we touch in the game.

How We Addressed This Challenge

NASA space apps challenge 2020 we selected the challenge "Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History " under " Inform ". In this challenge, we were told to tell the story of NASA’s Earth science enterprise using interactive digital tools. so we developed an interactive game called "EXPLORO"as a digital tool to tell the story.


In this game, we have to explore the space and earth and complete some tasks on the way we will collect information on many things during exploration. some times while the task we can find some easter eggs and can experience some historical and glorious events like the lunar landing.

We will learn a lot in the game about Earth and space and the history of earth and humanity but in a very fun way.

Project key features :


  • Space exploration.
  • Earth environment exploration.
  • Basic information about the elements found during the exploration.
  • Reward points for finishing tasks and learning through the process.
  • Open source cheap VR setup including a magnetic actuator vibrator matrix developed by us.


Importance & impact:


  • It is going to make learning easier.
  • Acknowledge people about NASA earth data&history, space, etc.
  • Make VR technology affordable for all.
How We Developed This Project

Used software:


  • Unity 3D( to make the game).
  • Arduino ide ( to program the hardware).
  • VS code (for programming in the game).

Project key hardware parts


  • Arduino (UNO, pro micro).
  • Magnetic actuator vibrators.
  • 100 k potentiometers.
  • mpu5060.

Inspiration:

We have seen so many curious minds finding answers to their curious questions. little kids so curious about the universe and they want to explore it. but that's not possible. as we also faced this problem it affected us so much that we wanted to create a way to at list virtually explore the universe .we don't even know about or own planet and that what amazing things mankind has done. we were inspired to make "EXPLORO" .

Problem solving, development & thought process:


  • Our first problem was to figure out a very fun and engaging concept to make the learning easy and also acknowledge people.
  • It took a lot of brainstorming to make the concept of the game.
  • Then we want to make the game as accessible as possible and also very interactive and fun at the same time so we knew we had to use VR to make it more interactive and realistic.so we decided we will make 2 modes so that anyone can play it with a VR or without one.
  • We made the game in unity and added both normal controls and VR controls to the game (though we don't have access to a commercial VR set up so we could not fully implement it in the VR mode).
  • Then we thought if we could make a cheap VR set up it may impact more people.
  • So then we developed our own Arduino based VR set up which may not be as good as the commercial once but good enough to have fun during the gameplay.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
  • As our project is a space and earth environment exploration game ,we needed many 3d models to create the virtual environment we used models from NASA's database.
  • Then we had to do a lot of research so that we can give as much information as possible in the game so we have done those researchers on NASA earth data .
  • we also added some easter eggs in the game where they can experience virtual recreation of some historical events like " the lunar landing" .so we collected images and other information about those events from NASA history and archives.
Project Demo
Project Code
Data & Resources
Tags
#inform #Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History #Hardware #VR #Game
Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Judging process.