EarthWise
EarthWise is an interactive web platform that teaches all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals through AI-driven immersive lessons featuring a lifelike AI tutor with real-time lip-sync. Winner of the NASA Space Apps 2024 Galactic Impact Award — the highest recognition category in the world's largest hackathon.
The Problem
SDG education reaches only a fraction of the global population it needs to, largely because existing resources are text-heavy, English-only, and lack the engagement needed to sustain learning. Young people in particular are disengaged from sustainability topics presented as dry policy documents.
The Solution
An AI tutor that speaks, moves, and adapts its explanations using GPT-3 for dynamic lesson generation, ElevenLabs for high-quality TTS, and Rhubarb for synchronized lip-sync animation. Google Translate API enables real-time multilingual delivery across 30+ languages. Gamified learning paths with progress tracking sustain engagement across all 17 SDGs.
Key Features
Challenges & Learnings
Synchronizing lip-sync animation with streamed TTS audio in a browser environment required buffering the full audio clip before rendering, creating a perceived latency problem. This was resolved by showing a 'thinking' animation during generation and playing the lip-synced response as a single seamless clip. Multilingual lip-sync (phoneme mapping varies by language) required language-specific Rhubarb configuration files.
Business Impact
Recognized by NASA as a Galactic Impact Award winner at Space Apps 2024 — the competition's highest award category. Platform has potential to reach millions of students globally, particularly in regions underserved by English-only SDG education resources.
Future Direction
Offline-first PWA mode for areas with unreliable connectivity, teacher dashboard for classroom deployment, and partnerships with UNESCO for formal curriculum integration.
Tech Stack
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