October 09, 2019

Professor Eric Aldrich and MU College of Engineering members created the app MeterologyAR, which helps meteorology students identify different types of clouds.

Atmospheric science Professor Eric Aldrich and members of the MU College of Engineering created the app MeterologyAR, which helps users learn about clouds. They created the app for meteorology students to identify the different types of clouds.

The app was a capstone project for five students in the College of Engineering. Aldrich came to Fang Wang, an assistant teaching professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department in the College of Engineering, and asked if the students could develop something for him to use in his meteorology classes. The goal of the project was “to research, design and implement a way to bring 2D meteorological course materials into the third dimension,” according to the app’s website.

Scottie Murrell, a graduate student who was on the capstone team, hopes to create more apps like MeterologyAR for other professors. The College of Engineering brought in Ph.D. student Amanda Stafford to do research on topics like this to see if it is possible to create more apps.

The College of Engineering is continuing to develop the app by researching what is working and what is not. The College is also working on changing the name of the app, which was accidentally misspelled by the App Store. They want to see the functionality of the app side, and from now until next spring, they will be working on updating the app and making the clouds more realistic. The app is available for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.