After coming back from REAL 2015, I’ve been looking out for DIY innovations that incorporate as many emerging technologies to create a cost effective new experience or process that others can buy, replicate, and/or improve upon. Project Anywhere is one that caught my eye for incorporating VR, scanning technology, and 3D printing to create an inexpensive new virtual reality gaming experience.
Constantinos Miltiadis, of ETH Zurich, has created Project Anywhere, which he says is unique way for gamers to control their avatars with their bodies. “I don’t know of anything else where you can have your own body in a digital environment… If you can interact in this kind of augmented reality environment in real time and have your own body as a digital avatar, I think this brings a different innovation,” said Mr Miltiadis.
Lightweight Inteligloves are an interesting part of Constantinos’s proof-of-concept experience. “This is an elastic PLA material that you can 3D print on a home 3D printer. These are flex sensors; we have a wireless module. This is a nine degree of freedom…inertia measuring unit, so it has an accelerometer, gyroscope, and digital compass.”
A Java program was written that tracks the user’s exact position based on reality data from the Kinect sensor, while also synchronizing data from the cloud. His iPhone is then fitted to a 3D-printed plastic mask that cost about $5 to make. Users then become fully immersed in their game. With Project Anywhere, multiple gamers from all over the world could potentially hang out in the same virtual space, though this would require a little commercial development.
Ludgar Hovestadt, Miltiadis’s supervising professor at ETH Zurich, says it has the potential to be a useful tool for architects, stating, “The driving force for actual architecture is the new media, connectivity via the Internet, and so on. And, to be able to arrange these things in a global environment and make a new architectural environment… is very important,.”
As emerging technologies like 3D printing, sensing technology and virtual reality begin to cross paths, we can expect new innovations, processes and experiences like Project Anywhere to pop up with more frequency and deflate the cost of cool 21st century experiences.
