It's been a long time, but this project is not dead! Far from it. From being a hobby, I am now working on the project full time within Reality Media and the Tachi Laboratory, part of Keio Media Design (KMD) in Tokyo. The wider interest here is in virtual reality, augmented reality, telepresence, and haptic devices.
The juggling game has had a massive overhaul.
- A Wii remote is being used to track the balls still using an IR motion tracking system, but now hands can now be simultaneously tracked using a second Wii remote. Since a single Wiimote can only track up to 4 objects, tracking 3 balls plus 2 hands is not possible. However, the Wiimote camera is actually able to track any light source once the IR filter has been removed, so hands can also be tracked by using a different wavelength optical filter along with corresponding wavelength LEDs mounted to the juggler's hands.
- The system has been moved to using Unity with C# on a Mac, allowing better representation of 3D balls, hands, more sophisticated visuals such as trails, as well as physics and a host of other things.
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Unity game development environment now being used.
- A haptic system is being designed to provide a sensation of catching balls in a virtual environment. This haptic system utilised a motor and Arduino controller, being controlled via Unity.
- Oculus Rift head-mounted-display (HMD) will be used to immerse the player in a virtual world with virtual juggling balls for the purposes of learning juggling and potentially a virtual juggling game. Any ideas you may have, please email me or leave a comment below!
More information and pictures as the project progresses.
