Earlier this year, Google announced that they were holding a contest for developers to send in some pretty interesting experiments with Android. These are things that are out of the ordinary, and something you wouldn’t normally see on Android. Winners would get a ticket to Google I/O which takes place this week (Wednesday, May 18th through Friday, May 20th), with the runner ups getting a Nexus 6P. Google has now announced the winners in this contest, and have updated their Android Experiments page with the experiments that won.
One of the winners was a notification card game known as “Hungermoji”. Google said that this won due to the unique use of the Notifications API. The game is actually available on the Google Play Store right now. The game basically uses the notification cards from the notification shade to show characters. The point of the game is to swipe away cards with bombs and keep those with fruit, which will feed your emoji. It’s a simple concept, but using the notification API really got Google’s attention.
Then there was an autonomous robot. This robot uses a smartphone that is mounted and will follow an object with the IR sensors that are onboard. These sensors will help the autonomous robot avoid obstacles it may come across. There was also a 3D controller created. It works with the sensors in your smartphone and Chromecast, and enables you to manipulate onscreen content with their phone. The developer stated that he could “really see this as a viable way to interact with all kinds of Cast apps.”
The developers that created these three experiments will be in Mountain View this week for Google I/O. But let’s not forget about the other interesting experiments that were created. They are also listed on Google’s page. These other winners will receive a Nexus 6P for their hard work. it’s not necessarily a trip to Google I/O, but still a nice little prize to have, especially if they didn’t have a Nexus 6P to test their apps and games on already. It’s pretty amazing what you can do with Android, especially when thinking outside of the box.