GULF WEEKLY -
Visiting heritage sites like Muharraq’s Pearling Path or the Pottery Village in A’Ali, while delightful, can also be a struggle for tourists and first-time visitors trying to find relevant historical context about these neighbourhoods.
A Bahrain-based student and aspiring computer engineer has come up with a possible solution - Raven AR - a set of Augmented Reality (AR) glasses, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) that provides context and more information about sites a tourist might visit.
Roven Roy, a Grade 12 student at The Asian School Bahrain, developed and built a prototype for the glasses over the last four months, spending his summer writing code, 3D-printing tech-powered glasses and soldering electronics to bring Bahrain’s tourist sites to life.
“Raven AR started as a project for a school team innovation event for tourism, but I designed and developed the Raven system solely by myself,” the 17-year-old Juffair resident told GulfWeekly.
“I built the glasses, electronics, app, enclosure and the rest myself.”
Thus far, the application currently includes sites like Bahrain Fort, Al Fateh Grand Mosque, Tree of Life, Bahrain National Museum and Manama Suq.
The wider Explore and itinerary system also includes places such as the Pearling Path Visitor Centre and A’ali Pottery, which Roven hopes to build out in the coming months.
“The first working version took around four months, from June to September,” he explained.
“Much of that time went into debugging power, networking, camera connectivity, software communication and fitting the electronics into a wearable frame.”
The glasses connect to a user’s phone through Wi-Fi, while Bluetooth audio is used to provide relevant auditory information.
This translates to a lighter and wearable set of glasses, since much of the heavier computer processing like AI, navigation, speech processing and computing live information can be done on a user’s phone, with just the results projected through the glasses.
The prototype with its ESP32-S3 controller, display and rechargeable battery still looks relatively bulky, at first glance, for the average user, but Roven hopes to further streamline it into something ‘smaller, lighter and cleaner’ in the future.
“My next step is to replace the separate development boards with custom printed circuit boards so the glasses can become smaller, lighter and cleaner,” he explained.
“After that, I want to move towards true spatial AR, where information can be anchored to real landmarks and objects in the wearer’s field of view.
“I could eventually see Raven being available at museums, forts and cultural sites for tourists to borrow during their visit, while the mobile app handles planning, navigation and tourism information.”
For the young Indian expatriate, who has lived in Bahrain all his life, this is not the first time he has put his knowledge of computer science to good use trying to solve challenges he experienced here.
Last year, he worked on ‘Ventora 1.0’ - a solar-powered air purification and humidification system with an app companion.
The project was later presented at an Indian Institute of Technology alumni event held at the Indian Embassy in Bahrain.
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