The Ultimate Coder Has Been Named - Final Results of Ultimate Coder Challenge: Going Perceptual

For 7 weeks we've seen 7 teams hack, code, build, and rebuild apps to leverage the Intel Perceptual Computing SDK using a convertible Ultrabook™. Our judges have taken time to review the work, have tested each and scored each of our Challenger teams.  The ink is dry, scores added, and the results are final. The Ultimate Coder awards are as follows. 

Ultimate Coder Grand Prize Winner:
Congratulations to Sixense Studios, "Ultimate Coder" of Ultimate Coder Challenge: Going Perceptual!

Sixense Studioes has been named “Ultimate Coder” unanimously from the judges for their Puppet in Motion application.  Judges scored Sixense high across all categories of the challenge for quality blog posts, video demos, technical proficiency, execution of Perceptual Computing features, and user experience of Perceptual computing features.  Of all the apps in the challenge judges believe this application showed the most polish and quality experience for Perceptual Computing. A video of their app can be seen below:

Winner: Sixense: Judges' comments:

• “....the idea, execution and potential makes this my number one pick. Keep it simple and educate users about perceptual computing in the first 2 seconds. This is the perceptual computing poster boy team!”
• “Best feedback, best gesture recognition, but could have been so much better (i.e., let the characters shine without involving that annoying moving scenery). +1 for the awesome UI feedback on hand position + calibration step.”
• “This app is the best example of the perceptual computing SDK, it's easy to understand and they plan on moving forward with it. If they can get it polished up it will be a good showcase app.”
• “Bonus points for a compelling and showcase product!” 

Secondary Prizes: 
In addition to the Grand Prize Winner, the rest of the Challengers were reviewed for consolation prizes in the categories of Technical Merit, Best UX for PerC, Best Video, and Best Blogs:

Technical Merit:  Many teams excelled technically in this challenge; from Lee’s ground-breaking work to teleport you into virtual conference rooms,  to Infrared5's persistence to get 3D head tracking working.  However,it was Quel Solaar’s custom head tracking feature that SO impressed us and the judges.  Judges said of Eskil: “A code wizard and someone who thinks outside of the box” and “Technically his contributions are the best of all contributors”. His contribution wins the technical merit award. Winner: Quel Solaar

View a demo of Quel Solaar's project below:

Best UX for PerC:  The Challengers' uses of Perceptual Computing could not be more different, and while Sixense won the overall challenge, we did see some user experiences that we believe are best practices and should be considered by all developers leveraging this technology. The winner for Best User Experience for Perceptual Computing is Code-Monkeys.  The Code-Monkeys' implemented a calibration system and visual guide to show the user's head and hand in space.  These additions to their application vastly increased the playability of their game and the overall experience compared to some of the other implementations.Winner: Code-Monkeys

Best Video: For this challenge we asked the developers to showcase their work in video form with at least 2 videos in the competition.  Many took this to heart and gave us some strong video reflections of their work week to week.  However,one challenger stood out, and one particular video stood out from the challenge.  We’ve seen this video played over and over again in Intel meetings and even heard it referenced multiple times by external developers seeking support.  That video is Lee Bamber's during week 3 of the challenge giving us a first glimpse of his 3D web conferencing application while explaining how he solved head and gaze tracking from within his sample app.Winner: Lee Bamber

Best Blogs: All Challengers excelled here. We have been impressed with code sharing and transparency of the process by all.  This was an extremely tough category to judge and in the end we have a tie.  Both Lee Bamber and Infrared5 dug deep to document their process, explain the ups and downs and showcase their solutions.  Infrared5 did a great job documenting their progress toward 3D head tracking, the value and importance of depth masking and their opinion on the current state and potential of Perceptual Computing.  Lee Bamber’s posts were extremely detailed, explaining his process and work week to week.  While Lee mostly wrote his own algorithms he demonstrated each week his progress in capturing depth data to a point cloud, tracking the head and gaze, and challenges to compress the depth and voice data.  Their posts are seen as invaluable and a great step toward helping educate a broader set of developers in Perceptual Computing overall. Winner (Tie): Lee Bamber & Infrared5

There were a total of 7 contributors to this challenge.  ALL did extraordinary work.  Not mentioned above are Peter O’Hanlon and Simian Squared. Their contributions are noteworthy.  Peter took on a big challenge using WPF to create a voice and gesture-based photo editing app, and providing some of the most insightful and educational blog posts of the challenge.  Simian Squared did a great job discussing a vision of Perceptual Computing with an ambitious project for creating a virtual potter's wheel. Unfortunately for Simian Squared, they ran into conflicts and technical issues that could not be overcome within the 7 weeks and they could not complete the challenge. However, they do plan to move forward.