Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Primarily, this concept means that the players have a very precious remote control
system with advanced feedback algorithms, but that is only a minor part of the idea.
Since the application is capable of controlling the tiny cars by itself using artificial in-
telligence, the machine can take part in race challenges against a human. Therefore,
the developers say, "This is a video game in a real world".
From a digital perspective, the system works like a traditional computer racing game:
one vehicle is the protagonist and is controlled by a real person, but other parti-
cipants are NPCs and use AI. The only difference is that the result is shown as real-
world installation rather than an image on a screen.
To expose all the advantages of such a paradigm,
Anki DRIVE
provides their robots
with some functionalities that can mainly be implemented in a virtual world. The cars
can shoot each other, but there are no real bullets; a firefight is taking place inside
theapplication, wherevirtualcalculationsofshotsarebeingmade.Nevertheless, the
consequences are pretty real; the car that is hit loses control.
There is also a system for virtual upgrades, which can either be used for weapons
or for racing performance (virtual engine tuning). Thus, ANKI's robotic car can be
considered as a shell filled with features available via external programming as the
system is very flexible; it only needs to create new code to add new objectives and
features. It is even hard to say whether this is a demonstration of augmented virtual-
ity or augmented reality.
The problem with many remote-control toys operated via mobile devices is that there
are only a small number of applications which are vanishing quickly. Usually they are
created by in-house software divisions and have no SDK for external developers.
Another weak point is the lack of universality. The design of vehicles make impact
on genres of AR games they are used in. It is hard to turn a tank into a unicorn. The
company Orbotix tried to resolve all these disadvantages by introducing a pretty new
concept of a mobile-device-controlled toy called Sphero (
http://www.gosphero.com
)
.
It looks like a simple ball, but special electronic and mechanical systems inside it let
it roll in any direction by itself without any external impulse. It gets the direction of its
movement from a mobile device. So, at the basic level, the invention looks like a ro-
botic ball that obeys a player's commands and can run around on a floor, a tabletop,
and so on. But fortunately, the magic does not stop here.
