Robot Arena: An augmented reality platform for game development

Abstract

Nowadays electronic games are of great importance to the economic sector, to computing, and to academic research, and not are limited to entertainment applications only. Augmented reality is one of the new frontiers to be explored in the search for innovation in gameplay and in interactive interfaces of electronic games. This article presents the research, development, and testing of an infrastructure, called Robot Arena, for the development of innovative games using the spatial augmented reality and new interfaces that this technology brings. Based on horizontal interfaces with elements of hardware and software, Robot ARena has a flexible architecture that enables different ways of interaction and visualization. Another aspect planned for this project is the control and communication of robots, which can be used as avatars in games. A Robot ARena prototype was implemented, tested, and used in the development of two game prototypes, FootBot ARena and TanSpace, which bring new challenges to the infrastructure, such as exploration of the influence of virtual objects on real objects and the application of tangible interfaces. © 2009 ACM.