Prestige Thailand · “Visionary, Augmented City”

In its May 2024 Innovator issue, Prestige Thailand gave M.L. Hariras Tongyai a full feature under its Visionary heading: “Augmented City”, written by Pasavat Tanskul.

The story is about a lifelong dream: turning Bangkok into a digital playground with extended reality. The feature traces it back to 2013, when he first put on an HTC Vive headset, and further still, to the Iron Man suits he built in high school.

It follows him from electronics at Queen Mary and AI and robotics at King's College London back to Bangkok: Motiwatt, a startup with an AI chatbot that suggested exercises to suit a user's mood and lifestyle, and BaanAR in rural Nakhon Nayok, where he worked with the Tourism Authority of Thailand to give talks at schools and made his first AR experiences, in which visitors scan objects to see mythical creatures and learn about history.

At the centre is his game, Augmented BKK, built in the spirit of Pokémon Go with Niantic's development kit: a robotic bunny companion, mystery chests, puzzles and monsters, mapped onto real landmarks. At the time he was mapping Benjakitti Park two days a week for the first test runs.

The feature closes on why he does it: to give kids hope and something to be excited about, and to build things for people rather than for the tech itself.