Want to make all your 5 year old son’s friends jealous? What if he told them he could make REAL volcanoes in his sandbox? Will this be the future of sandboxes, digitally enhanced with augmented reality?
It’s not actually that hard to set up! The system consists of a good computer running Linux, a Kinect, a projector, a sandbox, and sand. And that’s it! The University of California (UC Davis) has setup a few of these systems now to teach children about geography, which is a really cool demonstration of both 3D scanning and projection mapping. As you can see in the animated gif above, the Kinect can track the topography of the sand, and then project its “reality” onto it. In this case, a mini volcano.
Full instructions are available from UC Davis, which is a much better guide than we remember the last time we looked in on this project. Between this and augmented reality pinball, is the future of consumer electronics to cheap out and use AR? Why build something when you can project it?
[Thanks for the tip Rolinger!]
Want!!!
So once we combine this with personal VR goggles instead of projectors and network and sync it all together, kids (mostly?) will sit around playing in the “sand” but be fully immersed in all sorts of shared environments? To the outside observer, they would just be moving sand about. This could be really fun for museums, etc.
I’ve seen this style of project before and I still I want one. Kudos to UC Davis for putting everything out there.
I think the BoM just got put on my gift list.
Very nice!
One small improvement I can see: instead of drawing a top-down view of the smoke bellowing out – which ends up being projected on the ground; breaking the illusion a bit – just draw the shadows cast by said clouds (along with those of some lazily-drifting water-vapor clouds, if you want to get fancy).
What a superb demo. So neat!
This is really old,
Every time I see something like this I’m reminded how much my childhood sucked! In my day the only augmentation to the reality of the sand box was what the cat left in it!
Would prefer a universal IllumiRoom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x1LeKABNsw.
Now add some virtual humans, and it’s time to play God.
We have one at our makerspace in North Houston, Texas, Proto Makerspaace.
I’m building one. Failing, of course. But I will prevail and come out successful, I’m sure.