AndroidGuys

Monday was the deadline for Android Developers Challenge which ended up seeing more than 1,700 applications and programs from all over the world. One of the standout programs that seemed to grab a lot of attention was “Enkin” from Rafael Spring and Max Braun. We were fortunate enough to snag the duo for an interview and find out how Enkin came about and how it could end up reinventing navigation as we know it. Take a few minutes and get to know one of the teams posing a serious threat to the Developers Challenge.

Thanks for taking the time to do this. We’re sure you’re plenty busy these last few days. Let’s start out with who you are and a brief history.

We are both students at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Koblenz, Germany. The course is called Computational Visualistics, which is basically Computer Science, but with an emphasis on its visual elements such as computer graphics or image processing.

I think we both felt that the stuff we’ve learned there helped us a lot on actually getting things done the way it’s supposed to be. You could say that university classes have prepared us pretty well for this project. Compared to other people’s experiences, this isn’t always the case.

The work on Enkin, however, began in Japan. We spent six months at Osaka University with research on robots, a funny coincidence with Google Android’s name and an explanation for the yellow robots in our video!

Describe Enkin for those who are not familiar with it.

In its core, it’s a navigation tool. But unlike the zillions of 2D map-based navigators we think it’s one with a new and unique style. Think of Enkin as the bridge between maps and reality. The problem with all traditional navigators is that they are all based on maps - abstractions of reality. As you visually navigate with them, you have to reverse this abstraction in order to find the reality counterpart to your content’s location on the map.

But as we saw the tools which Android offers, we realized that basically this abstraction is no longer necessary and that location-based content can be visualized in a far more intuitive way, even extending live images (which, in a way, places our project near to augmented reality applications).

Imagine you can search for businesses or get driving directions, just like you are used to it from Google Maps, and then “dive” right into the map! This freedom in mind, we had tons of ideas. Unfortunately we did not have the time or the resources to realize them all in a way that would have individually satisfied us. So what you see in the demo can be considered just a fraction of what is still to come. Some of the ideas for the future are described in the official project documentation, which you can find on our website.

Where do you see Enkin fitting in? Who will be its target audience? How will it help?

In the beginning the target audience will mostly be people who are open to new technology and who enjoy playing with it. But since every new technology is just accepted if it enriches people’s live in a native, intuitive way, we think that word would spread fast as people start to like Enkin and use it for their everyday navigation needs.

Once we reach this point it is likely that people don’t want to change back to “old-fashioned” navigators so then the road is open to introduce new features. There are much more things to come.

Did you specifically create Enkin for the Developers Challenge?

Enkin was designed as an entry for the Android Developer Challenge from the very beginning. As we saw all the features of Android it inspired us to think up a new application that uses all these. There were also lots of people at Osaka University, which has a huge engineering school that did stuff with digital sensors and maybe we’ve been a little bit biased by them.

But the challenge part of the ADC was a driving factor, too. We really liked checking out what other people did and how we could be different in some way. So I think we’ve pretty much succeeded. Enkin uses GPS, 3D graphics via OpenGL ES, video from the camera, the orientation sensors, and several web services taking advantage of always-on internet. But what is more important: it’s not just an arbitrary combination of all these. It fits together nicely and we couldn’t spare one part. Upcoming features will make use of even more aspects of Android.

That sounds exciting! Do you see any other competition with your application?

None in the Challenge so far. Some projects we saw targeting Augmented Reality are really nice but have a completely different context, others claim a somewhat similar use but totally lack a sound conceptual foundation.

Some time into our development, we found out about a project by NOKIA, called “MARA”. They display information from location-based searches on top of a video image. But as far as we know it’s discontinued and we are not sure if it will be realized at all. In the end, the concept of Enkin is much broader anyway.

How do you plan to get the word out about your program?

There has been a tremendous response in the first couple of days after we set up the website and wrote to several blogs. Now we are giving interviews, answering emails, and watching international attention grow.

This is pleasing us since before that, we were not even sure if people would like or understand the project. It’s different in many ways. We are also planning more demo videos for the near future since this is what caught people the most. We have some nice ideas for that, so be prepared.

We’ll definitely be ready for those. How are you going to make Enkin available? Any plans on distribution or pricing?

Currently we are not thinking about pricing or marketing. What is far more important is to catch people’s attention and enthusiasm for the project. We can’t wait to see people using it! This is priceless in any way but either we don’t want people to think about paying money when they get their hands on Enkin.

Should we reach a broad user-base someday, we are pretty sure to find a business plan that doesn’t constrain users and which goes along with our financial expectations as well.

There hasn’t been a final decision yet on how to distribute Enkin. It’ll also depend on how well this project is received by the Challenge judges and thus on what funds we’ll be able to base our business model on.

How soon will we see Enkin in the wild?

The whole concept doesn’t make much sense without the actual hardware in your hand. So unfortunately you’ll have to wait until there are Android devices including all the parts we need. A large screen and a camera should be standard for the higher end, as well as accelerometers. But accelerometers can only show you where up or down is, not the direction you are facing. For that, we need a digital compass and we hope that Android devices will soon have one.

Thanks, Scott. We’d like you to mention our web page www.enkin.net since this is where we’ll put all the new information in the future. You can also find some more nice screenshots in the documentation!

One final question. If the Google guys were sitting across from the table from you, what would you say to them?

Thanks guys! We’re excited to see how well you do in the challenge. Enkin is unlike any mapping and navigation we’ve ever seen and we hope you make it through the first round! If anyone would like to see video of Enkin in action, please stop by their site and have a look.