Light Raider

Half a year after HackManchester I decided to give  a go to a Data-Based Hackaton... this time joining a team with friends. The result was the Light Raider, an Android app that encourages running among Mancunians by targeting lamps in the streets. It went really well as we won in "life quality" topic ... and I used tha tmoney to get me an Oculus Rift SDK 2 (but that is a different story) and we even got showcased by some of the local media.

The Hackaton was organized by  the Greater Manchester Data Synchronisation Programme (GMDS) They offered a very wide variety of open data from Greater Manchester's councils, and it was the "competitors" role to create new and interesting applications and services that are able to communicate with the datasets in order to create a more intelligent city.

Of all the datasets that we could choose we loved the ones that store the information of every street-lamp in a council... and as the topic: improve Mancunian's quality of life. After thinking hard and many discussions we decided to take one of my original ideas and mix it a bit: Light Raider.

Light Raider is an Android game that uses some concepts from Ingress, RunKeeper and Tamagochi to make users go out and run. In this game, the user has a pet (a light bulb) that is constantly demanding to be fed with energy, so every 1-2 days the user must go out and retrieve some energy in order to keep it alive... and here is where the game gets interesting. Once the player decides to go out running, the view changes to a countdown and the user must retrieve energy faster than it drains in order to fulfil the "batteries" of the light-bulb. To do so all street-lamps around the phone are retrieved from the council's data set and, every time the user pass by a new lamp, the energy levels go up a little bit.

Sounds easy? It is not. On running mode the light-bulb's battery drains quite fast and requires the user to actually run. But also the lamps visited by the user are remembered... which means he has to conquer new ones every time.

Still easy? Ok! It is not only about visiting new lamps. In the map the user can see which lamps have been"raided by other players already and he will need to reconquer his territory if he wants to score high in the general competition. If the pet dies (not getting energy for a few days) all the attached lamps are freed and the general score goes back to 0.

With this system for micro (pet energy) and macro (lamps raiding) "encouraging system" the user should have enough motivation to go out and do a bit of exercise hopefully!

Applications for the AR system

One of the advantages of the AR system developed is the ability to couple the logic of a video game. At the same time I was coding the system, my friend Carlos Torija was designing a video game, he created the artificial intelligences and logic and then we both added simple graphics with openGL and gave it some AR. In this game you have to evade/attack an evil drone that follows and tries to kill you. The game has been produced to be played in a open space and it has virtual walls! Next step includes map recognition.

I also started another AR game using my system. I planned to release it for bada 2.0 but Samsung keeps delaying it so the game is unfinished. The game is an augmented stunt kite simulator, at the moment it has really simple physics and fixed wind but I plan to add a wind system using weather forecast and advanced physics in order to perform realistic tricks.

Note: Pink artifacts appears when taking a screenshot and are not present in the real application. 

Augmented Reality System

After 5 years studying it comes time for the dissertation. You can choose one of the many subjects proposed by the professors , but I decided to go on my own creating a whole augmented reality system.

 The original idea consisted in a program that should work in open environments, without markers, trying to naturally fuse the virtual and the real world. In fact those "open environments" were a problem, because giving the user so much freedom can result in  low performance visualization when using a smartphone. This was the key point and I wanted to success where other programs such as Layar (poor integration) or AiRaid (lack of freedom) failed.

The system was developed trough a year using C++ and OpenGL for bada smartphones and integrates some new ideas that makes it excels over other AR systems:

• Efficient usage of sensors to obtain a sound registration. This allows the program to work faster in open environments and to avoid possible measurement errors faster.
• Real lightning system. Using GPS-based weather information and sun tracking algorithms in order to get a realistic integration.

In this video the sun movement has been accelerated and the perspective translated for didactical purposes.

• GPS Hybrid. The system can respond correctly even in extreme scenarios, where no accurate GPS data is given, thanks to the advanced pedometer developed.
• Game's logic integration made easy. Programming an augmented video-game is really easy thanks to the well designed system architecture.

This example recreates the worst-case scenario where no GPS signal is received.

For extra information, an explanatory part of the dissertation and many interesting papers about AR can be found here, but I am afraid it is in Spanish. 

Note:Pink artifacts appears when taking a screenshot and are not present in the real application.

The Augmented Agenda

Augmented Reality is probably one of the most eye-catching technologies nowadays. I still remember how I started to dream about it years before it became an emerging technology. Much time later I was able to do a complete dissertation about it (I will talk about this in another section).

My very first try with AR supposed the creation of a weird idea I had long time ago: some day AR and social networks will work completely together and people will be able to see personal information about me just pointing at me with their phones. This terrible future is too close and I decided it was possible to create an App that explains the idea.

My little experiment puts together AR and social information in an Augmented Agenda. Created for bada phones (C++), the app is capable of detecting faces of your contacts and show their names, mobile phones or e-mails. It also includes a drawing program to create masks for the faces, so you can easily remember who is each person by enhancing their image with funny glasses (or hats, or scars...). It is very useful to recognize those people you met long time ago and whose names you can't remember without the embarrassment of asking.