Lit Lens: AI-Powered Research Assistant

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AI Citation
AR features

Inspiration

We were inspired by the prompt that asked hackers to reimagine the U Pitt Library Experience that uses publicly available library catalogs and research databases to create an enhanced research experience that helps students navigate resources, discover relevant materials, and even generate citations. Identify potential U Pitt data sources like library archives and special collections that could enhance this tool in a production environment.

TEAM

Gavin Fehl GMF60@pitt.edu

Amy Zhang AHZ12@pitt.edu

Jason Man JAM770@pitt.edu

Gabe Peralta GRP67@pitt.edu

What it does

Our project is a mobile application that allows a user to "SCAN" a book and returns relevant information like the title, author, publication date,

How we built it

Using Unity, Google Cloud Vision API, and the Vuforia game engine, we were able to enable the webcam and scan three selected books as a proof of concept. We then used Gemini AI API and prompted it to act like a research assistant, then give a description of the book based on the description on Google Books AND relate it to the user's topic they input.

Challenges we ran into

It was hard to implement reading in the books and its titles because they were 3d objects, so making a target on Vuforia to match the book, then have it map information on top of it was our solution. We also had a hard time getting the Pitt API to work, so we were unable to access the query methods to search the actual Pitt catalog that has books available to Pitt students. But overall, if we had more time, we'd want to use more open source databases to search for books and other relevant information.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of getting the mobile application to a fully running state, with back-end and front-end in the short period of time we had.

What we learned

We learned about UNITY AR tools

What's next for Lit Lens: AI-Powered Research Assistant

Integrate with Pitt Cat to see availability Instead of searching a specific title, use a keyword search Integrate with databases like JSTOR (Accessible via Pitt)for more specific scholarly articles Prioritize accessibility for users with disabilities, including those who are visually impaired and deaf