My Special Lovable Bunny Friend

Concept

We use the position and orientation of our loveable bunny friend to play games. This allows children to keep playing with their dolls even when on the computer by using their doll as a controller of sorts.We also demonstrate how the orientation and position of a doll can be accurately tracked through accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer information.

Target

Little children who play with dolls have to unfortunately put their toys down when accessing technology. With this, we enable children to not put down their toys even when on the computer. Furthermore, this allows them to bring their dolls into various realities and worlds as they play different games. The target audience is children.

Technical System

The YEI 3-Space sensor constantly takes down information on its three sensors. The accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyroscope. We use serial communication to read the data and process it into position and orientation information on our loveable bunny. The sensor is hidden inside the bunny along with the microcontroller or bluetooth chip. These then send information to the computer or display where a game is visually shown and can be played through the orientation and position of the bunny.

The game we developed is a 3-D version of cube runner where a bunny can move in different directions depending on the orientation it is facing. The objective is to dodge cubes for as long as possible and it is built in Unity.

Specs

3-Space Sensor - $124 - ordered from eBay

Teensy - $24 - Teensy website

Arduino Kit - $85 - from the arduino website

Bluetooth Chip - $10 - eBay

Manufacturing Techniques

The only advanced technique we will use aside from using a breadboard to hook up wires together includes soldering pieces onto the sensor to establish a more stable connection.

Problems

Sensor was broken.

Unsteady connection - needs to be soldered.

None of the code snippets found and modified seem to work.

Solution - we will order another sensor; one that has a USB connection built in.

Division of Labor

Kevin - Assisted in building Unity game

         - Contributed to game design

Simon - Built game to be played via bunny in Unity

          - motivational support

Zach - getting the sensor data to work properly and connect with Unity

        - contributing to game design