December 20, 2024
At Mizzou, we believe in the power of hands-on learning. We call it the Missouri Method, and it is an important part of our curriculum and what makes Mizzou Made engineers valuable in the workforce. For Mizzou Engineers, that process culminates with a senior capstone class where students develop solutions to real-world problems.
Every semester, computer science students work in groups to create web applications to give them professional experience before they enter the workforce. One group, which included Joe Kelley, Andrew Kruszka and Chris Wang, developed a novel augmented reality experience that allowed users to customize their physical space.
Learn more about the project, how the group worked to complete it and what they learned from the experience.
From ideation to development
Andrew Kruszka: We wanted to create a novel augmented reality solution that enabled users to seamlessly customize their physical spaces with digital experiences.
Joe Kelley: We knew that we wanted to create some sort of augmented reality experience. Some of our initial ideas included scavenger hunts or informational blurbs that would pop up when specific objects or locations were detected. We couldn’t figure out what specific idea would be the best, so we decided to instead focus on a product that could enable any augmented reality experience that users could want.
Chris Wang: In Capstone I, we focused on documentation and ideation. We wrote out a very specific development plan and knew what tools and software we would need for our project. Then, in June and July, we started initializing everything that we needed. And in Capstone II we started truly developing our project, Anchored Reality.
A dynamic reality
Kruszka: In the end, we created technology that enables users to create dynamic augmented reality experiences within their physical spaces. Using anchor points, NFC chips and a custom object detection model, users can tap their phones to an anchor and be automatically redirected to our website. When they point their camera at our anchor, an image or 3D object will be displayed on the user’s phone as if it’s hovering over the anchor like a hologram. We currently have fully functioning 3D printed prototypes for our anchors and a hosted website for our owner media management dashboard.
Putting coursework into action
Kelley: Throughout the development process, we learned many new technologies such as AWS Amplify and EC2, MongoDB and Roboflow. The project also helped us experience what a true team development project looks like and how to manage each other’s work.
Wang: The web development courses offered through the IT program probably had the biggest impact on our development since we knew the basic steps for creating and hosting a React-based program. The software development course also helped as we learned some best practices for development cycles and how to work as a team.
Learn more about computer science at Mizzou!
Read about other capstone projects here.