GlobalLogic teams win awards at Intel RealSense App Challenge

Two teams from GlobalLogic got impressive results at Intel RealSense App Challenge, an international contest.

More than 1300 projects from all over the world participated in Intel RealSense App Challenge.

There are a few Ukrainian teams among the winners and awarded participants, and two of them represent GlobalLogic’s Ukrainian offices.

Emma App (Emotional Decoration), a project developed by a team from GlobalLogic’s Kyiv office, won a second prize at Intel contest. Based on Intel RealSense camera, this app recognizes emotions, gestures and voices of users, changes video chat’s background simultaneously and adds thematic animation according to user’s current mood.

App development involved solving many challenging problems such as precise recognition of facial expressions, automatic identification of the main object in front of the camera, background selection etc.

Another project, Theatre of Shadows developed by GlobalLogic Mykolaiv team, was awarded with a Trailblazer Recognition award for the creation of an innovative demo that pushed the boundaries of human-computer interaction.

This gaming app recognizes hands in front of the camera and displays their virtual “shadows” on a screen, turning them into animated characters. Although it seems simple, the project took significant efforts in development. The reason is that the standard API of the camera does not provide good recognition of fingers put together and gestures typical for the theatre of shadows.

“For this reason we decided to use the options which are well-developed, such as foreground selection (hands, actually) with a depth camera,”

Kyrylo Gerasymenko, Theatre of Shadows developer, says.

Starting from autumn 2014, GlobalLogic has been actively supporting Intel RealSense App Challenge among its technical specialists by organizing meetings of the participants, providing necessary equipment, helping choose the best ideas etc.

The most active group of challenge enthusiasts was formed within GlobalLogic HackerSpace, a corporate technical community.

“We have brainstormed about ten ideas to submit,”

Volodymyr Shymanskyi, GlobalLogic HackerSpace founder and Emma App developer, remembers.

“A half of them appeared to be interesting, the teams received Intel RealSense cameras and started to work on their projects. Our success proves that a lot can be achieved when people work on a certain idea together.”

All in all, GlobalLogic teams have submitted 5 projects to the contest, 4 of which has reached the final stage and 2 have been awarded at Intel RealSense App Challenge.

“Intel RealSense App Challenge and other similar contests help our talented engineers master the newest technologies, develop their own projects and boost Proof of Concept (PoC) culture within the company,”

comments Andrii Iavorskyi, Engineering Vice President at GlobalLogic.

“This is why we actively support such events inside and outside of our company”.

Source: GlobalLogic