There is a pretty original and breathtaking initiative that lets mobile devices control small electric toys, turning them into an interesting game experience. All this started with remote control car models and helicopters managed through special iOS applications. This was funny, especially for kids, but also pretty traditional. Except the controller that was new, the process itself was the same and did not require any additional video game background. Later, more advanced models such as AR.Drone, the amazing quadricopter by Parrot (http://ardrone2.parrot.com/) appeared. AR.Drone has an onboard camera, and its native iOS application uses live video images along with virtual controls and other onscreen digital information, since it truly adopts itself to the requisites an AR environment. Moreover, developers also let the quadricopter get involved in some gaming activities. There are special applications that use AR to create a virtual game environment. For example, AR.Rescue 2 lets players collect items in the air and fight with alien invaders. It even uses fiducial markers to generate virtual decorations for the player's base. The game idea and mechanics are very close to early arcade games; it can even be considered as primitive. However, because of an advanced context involving AR and high-end remote controlled flying vehicles, the immersion effect is simply tremendous!
Anki DRIVE's little robotic cars, which use mobile devices as a platform for AI.Image Courtesy: Anki DRIVE
A different approach to mixed reality was made by a company named Anki, Inc (http://anki.com). They introduced a unique concept of gaming. Their product is known as Anki DRIVE; it includes a special mat with track markings on it and a couple of toy cars. These tiny vehicles are not simple remote controlled toys; in reality, they are small robots with sensors that scan the track and send information to an iOS device where calculations and decisions are made in real time and sent back, since the device is the mother computer for these cars. It can control their speed, direction of movement, and so on. Therefore, there are real objects as well as accurate virtual representations of them inside a special iOS application. Any manipulations in the virtual space have a direct effect on the behavior of the real toy, and vice versa.
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 intelligence, 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 participants 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 the application, where virtual calculations of shots are being made. 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 virtuality 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 robotic 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.
The Sphero robotic ball. A control interface is seen behind. Image by Obotix
First of all, Sphero has several internal sensors, so it can detect various real-time events and register various types of data. The device has a magnetometer, a three axis gyroscope, and an accelerometer, which can report on collisions with other objects, current position, distance traveled, velocity achieved, and so on. Thereby, the ball can be easily turned into an input device. By holding it in their hand, a person may rotate it, tilt, move in space, and all these actions will be registered and successfully transferred to an iOS device where they will be interpreted and used. Moreover, the ball has multicolor LEDs since a visual feedback is possible that increases the efficiency of the input procedure. Such a functionality may be utilized both in games and other types of applications; developers only have to think of how to use such an opportunity.
It seems that by playing the role of a controller, Sphero brings in some sort of augmented virtuality to the mobile game market (a physical object is used to control computer-generated reality), but that is not all. While it rolls around using its engine, it may be turned into an object-based marker used in AR applications. All the sensors provide pretty accurate positioning information, so the simulation looks smooth enough. In contrary to traditional planar markers, the robotic ball may freely rotate around a vertical axis, changing the angle of the main character (or another type of 3D object attached to the fiducial) rather than whole game scene. This is a much more flexible system, exposing new gameplay opportunities. Another advantage is the universal geometric shape of the marker; a sphere is very handy for putting AR 3D puppets on it or adding digital special effects.
Sphero is widely popularized as a unique gaming system with various functionalities and a lot of interesting features. The technology is very young, but there are a bunch of different games for it, including the ones from third-party developers. Most of the products are for the AV functionality and use Sphero as a handy controller; nevertheless, there are others that experiment with the AR environment. Orbotix did a good job by offering a special SDK (https://developer.gosphero.com/) so many more developers might begin use Sphero's talents in their products.