[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?

[kosche]

Hi jermaustin1! Not exactly, we don't use users' data to extend dataset. Photos made by users are labeled (classified) by existing nn, and you don't want to use results produces by nn to retrain same nn.

Currently we have points, achievements for unique cars, some useful info, like prices of the cars. But we are constantly thinking what to add more.

[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?

[kosche]

There are two main sources: used car sites and youtube. Used car sites have ads classified across make/model hierarchy already - you just need to filter away unsuitable photos - this task can be automated. And youtube is good for new models. We do some hand-classification as well, but only for rare cars, where images are not easy to find.

[nexuist]

Just downloaded the app for iOS. Really cool idea.

[kosche]

Thank you! :)