Show HN: Mobile Game – Car Hunters

[kosche]

Hi guys,

I want to share a project me and couple more guys were working on last year - Car Hunters. Essentially we built a mobile game using Computer Vision and AI.

Some problems we had to solve while working on Car Hunters:

- we collected a pretty solid dataset of car images (~3mil photos so far). For that we built own software, which helps us to support car models hierarchy, maintain links, retrain recognition models and deliver recognition model-binaries to the end-user devices;

- make/model recognition is done on the end-user device and both android/iOS platforms run neural network inference on GPU;

- we built-in pretty fast and reliable object-tracker which is independent of platform as well.

So what is Car Hunters? We've all heard about Pokemon Go, where you hunt for virtual creatures. We offer you instead to get points and unlock achievements by searching for cars in real world!

More details and description can be found in Google Play and Apple App Store. Car Hunters is available only in 10 countries for now. Let me know if you unable to download it but would like to.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/car-hunters-discover-cars/id14...

I would appreciate if you share Car Hunters with those, who might love cars as much as we do!

Thanks.

[jermaustin1]

So are you just gamifying users collecting a large data set for you? I think that is genius.

What are you doing to encourage engagement? Why would one keep playing? Is there something other than just seeing their score go up?

[sefrost]

Do you have a service like this in the US (or your country)?

You can enter a registration plate and get a huge amount of data, including historic MOT details:

https://www.gov.uk/get-vehicle-information-from-dvla

I’m not sure what an MOT is called in other countries, but it ensures a car is roadworthy.

[dlivingston]

What an insanely clever idea. Great work! 3M photos is a huge dataset; I’m guessing each photo already had associated metadata and you did not hand-classify? Where did you grab such a large dataset?

[nexuist]

Just downloaded the app for iOS. Really cool idea.

[axegon_]

This is a brilliant idea actually. This could be a brilliant addition for car resellers, given that most use their smartphones to take pictures of their car park: New listing > take photos > most of the data is pre-filled.

[kosche]

Yes, you a right. We think about this direction. Here is another video which shows how this can be used for 'quick cars search'

https://youtu.be/BFlaqSz0Cmo

[dmitripopov]

After reading the title and watching first 2 seconds I thought it will fire a rocket launcher and the car would go up in flames thanks to AR.

[kosche]

That is an interesting idea :)

[namelosw]

And the car owner can deploy static defenses and traps...

[godfreyho]

What a coincidence I have also launched very similar app recently. However, mine doesn’t have the gamification concept (hunter) which I think is brilliant. Mine can be found here: https://about.mudcar.dev/

[kosche]

ha! Interesting. Did you train model yourself or find some ready available?

BTW we also have an API for car's make/model/years/color/angle recognition. We can share API key for that if you'd like: https://carnet.ai

[anotheryou]

Aww man, worst timing now that more and more are getting locked down :/

maybe repost in a month or two or three

[kosche]

Yes. I thought about that too. Totally agree, timing is not 'perfect' :(, but could not just wait.

[JoeDaDude]

Cool idea, a game using ML object recognition. Haven't tried it but it looks more reliable than Plantsnap [1].

1. https://www.plantsnap.com/

[aliswe]

I didn't really get the game idea, but cool demo and maybe a fun challenge would be to find a car worth a certain amount of money...

[kosche]

Yes. We thought about using car's value for quests/achievements. Haven't find reliable source for pricing data yet.

Current concept idea is very similar to one you suggested. Every car is assigned with some amount of points based on car's rarity. Player is then tasked to find certain models and get points for that.

We are thinking about adding 'social' element at some point: function to share car photos comment/react on them

[pmg101]

Love this idea! Perfect timing as well with other social activities curtailed makes walking the neighbourhood streets into a fun game!