Project Proposal Tangible User Interfaces, School of Information, class 262

Projectmembers: Kevin Swelsen, John Servaes

The idea behind our project is to create a tangible game. We want to simulate two different games to start with. Pinball and a dutch game called sjoelen, which is roughly similar to the American game shovelboard. An example of sjoelen can be found here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMJgIGhGVzU. The idea behind the game is that the user has an amount of pucks, and the idea is to slide the puck in one of the holes. Each hole has a different amount of points attached to it, and off course the player with the highest score wins.

Our idea is to use a technology called reacTIVision (http://reactivision.sourceforge.net/) which is a framework for tracking markers attached to a certain physical object. Using these kind of tracking mechanisms, a user does not need an actual pinball machine anymore, or a shovelboard machine anymore, but instead can use any table or any smooth surface. Basically, the user is able to use an ordinary object like a puck to control the game. In the case of sjoelen, the user slides a puck over the table and its trajectory is mapped on to a screen. This is done using a camera and the framework mentioned before.

Other examples of projects that have been done using the reacTIVision framework are for example an ableton: http://vimeo.com/channels/reactivision#25972476.