Central Huron Council Approves Distributing Request For Proposal For The Purposes Of Hiring A Contractor To Complete Central Huron Digital Transformation Strategy
by Bob Montgomery
Central Huron council has voted to proceed with a Request for Proposal to move ahead with the hiring of a contractor to complete the municipality's Digital Transformation Strategy.
Central Huron Community Improvement Coordinator Angela Smith says the new project is another animation project that involves augmented reality and mixed reality. She says it will involve the animation of the radar screen in the middle of downtown Clinton, similar to the animated murals that they did downtown last summer, and she's particularly pleased to be able to get that rolling this year because it ties in nicely with the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force. They will also be digitizing the mapping system at the Hullett Marsh, so people will be able to find things online.
Smith says the project is entirely funded through grants, but in order to get the grant there had to be an education component, and a community engagement component to the project, and they're meeting those requirements by integrating light and XR technology in a way that has never been used before in Canada. And to meet the education component the company that's doing the work for them must provide a course on how they do the augmented reality projects to the local high schools. “That's the big investment and possibly the most exciting part of the project because the course will be offered in both of the high schools in Clinton.”
Smith says it's a two-year project so there will be a lot of steps to it. One other thing it will do is add an audio component to the video component that already exists for the murals that are part of the walking tour around Clinton. And the audio will all be done by the high school students, so not only are they learning about the technology behind the augmented reality, they're getting first hand, resume-building experience as voice actors and they're going to set up a sound studio so they can do it on location with the students. So it's a huge investment in the youth in the community.
