About the Programme
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What is the Niantic Lightship Augmented Reality Accelerator?
Niantic Labs, leading mobile games creators, have recently launched a new tool to build augmented reality (AR) experiences. Digital Catapult is teaming up with Niantic to deliver the Lightship Augmented Reality Developer Kit (ARDK) to immersive organisations in the UK. The toolkit lowers the barriers to entry for developers to create immersive augmented reality experiences and enables developers to bring virtual content into the real world.
The Digital Catapult and Niantic Lightship Augmented Reality Accelerator is looking for immersive developers to come up with creative concepts that solve the challenges set out by our industry partners.
The three individual challenges set by industry partners; Studio Wayne McGregor, Cartoon Network and Niantic, are looking for developers to create pitches that bring people together and enhance real-world experiences. The best ideas will be selected to take place in a pitching competition, after the pitching competition the three concepts that best respond to the industry challenges will be awarded up to £100,000 and technical support to develop a demonstrator on Niantic’s Lightship Platform. See below for more details about the industry-specific challenges.
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What is Digital Catapult?
Digital Catapult is the UK authority on advanced digital technology. Through collaboration and innovation, we accelerate industry adoption to drive growth and opportunity across the economy.
We bring together an expert and enterprising community of researchers, startups, scaleups and industry leaders to discover new ways to solve big challenges to unlock the UK’s future potential. Through our specialist programmes and experimental facilities, we make sure that innovation thrives and the right solutions make it to the real world.
Our goal is to accelerate new possibilities in everything we do and for every business we partner with the journey – breaking down barriers, de-risking innovation, opening up markets and responsibly shaping the products, services and experiences of the future.
Digital Catapult is part of the Catapult Network that supports businesses in transforming great ideas into valuable products and services. We are a network of world-leading technology and innovation centres established by Innovate UK.
Visit www.digicatapult.org.uk for more information.
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What are the programme phases?
The programme is divided into two phases:
Phase 1 – Concept development and pitching competition
This concept development phase is one month long and will take place in August 2022. The best applications will be selected to further develop their concept and to take place in a pitching competition in front of a panel from the relevant challenge owner, Niantic, and Digital Catapult in the w/c 29th August 2022.
Those selected to take part in the pitching competition will be awarded £2000+VAT to support the development of a concept and pitch.
Phase 2 – Demonstrator development
After the pitching competition, the three concepts that best respond to the industry challenges will be awarded up to £100,000 to develop the challenge demonstrator.
This phase will start in the w/c 3rd October 2022 – to finish on February 2023.
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What is meant by Concept Development?
Concept development is defined as:
A strong example of your idea with supporting documentation of what you will build as your demonstrator responding to the challenges set by our industry partners. This will include a pitch presentation of the concept to the industry partners, supporting documentation, a detailed project plan explaining work packages and how the funding will be used.
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What is meant by Demonstrator?
A demonstrator is an experience that provides an audiovisual and interactive benchmark of the experience, illustrating what a user will be expected to see, do, hear, and feel when they are within or having the experience. It will also prove the feasibility of any key technological or logistical elements, particularly if they could be considered risky.
The demonstrators will not be ready for a consumer application but the audiovisual elements and interactive functionality should be of sufficiently high quality to constitute a “preview” or “alpha” version of an application.
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What are the key dates of the programme?
Open Call – Application Deadline Sunday 19th June 2022 at 23:59 pm
Phase 1
Phase 1 – Applications shortlisting – 16th May – 27th June 2022
Phase 1 – Final selection and deliberation days – w/c 27th June – 15th July 2022
Intended public announcement of successful applications: Friday 15th July 2022
Phase 1 – Start date, concept development starts w/c 1st August 2022
Concept Development Presentation – w/c 29th August 2022
Phase 2
Phase 2 – Judging period – 5th September 2022 – 16th September 2022
Intended public announcement of Phase 2 finalists: Friday 16th September 2022
Phase 2 – Demonstrator Development – w/c 3rd October 2022 – February 2023
Final showcase and programme close – w/c 1st February 2023