Barlo Radiators Augmented Reality App
Barlo Radiators selected Atticus Digital to build an industry groundbreaking application for selecting designer radiators using augmented reality (AR) technologies. It gives consumers the opportunity to virtually ‘try before they buy, and give the Barlo sales team a brand-new sales tool to help them add value when communicating with customers.
The app is aimed at professionals and consumers alike to highlight the extensive range of designer radiators that Barlo has to offer, and to help them visualize how different designer radiators would appear in their home
The application has the ability to create a project, calculate the estimated heat-loss for each room in a property & calculate a room’s BTU requirement and use AR and ident-marker to position chosen (sized & coloured) radiators.
Challenges:
To provide a live view of the users surroundings and augment this view with a radiator displayed in situ. For the application to be of any use the radiators would need to be displayed to scale This was the deciding factor that we choose Augmented reality (AR) as our approach.
Both marker based (Vuforia) and markerless based (AR Core & AR Kit) technologies were identified and tested. For this we pushed the boundaries in the marker based range so that we could effectively track objects using AR technologies at distance, and different lighting conditions. When looking into tracking options we had to consider the application be accessible to large demographics.
Solution:
After deciding on our approach of a marker solution based on maximising coverage. Our developers were able to display Barlo radiators to scale in the user's surroundings by placing a marker based around the Barlo’s company logo. We also provided an easy to use interface and extensive features such as textured colours, room measurements, heat output calculations and emailable quotes.
Outcome:
The application currently gives installers easy access to the Barlo Design portfolio, including its most popular Slieve, Adagio, Forza and Plaza designs and is available to download from both iOS and Google play stores. The application is easily updated with further ranges, features and languages to be added in the near future.
