Ken Kawamoto took a robotic toy, some cameras and a projector to build a Mario Kart speedway in his living room. The result is up on his blog and the racing looks spectacular.
RomoCart is one of Kawamoto’s series of home hacks. Romo is the robotics platform controlled through an iphone app that the team used to recreate the video game racing system many of us grew up playing.
http://kawalabo.blogspot.jp/2014/10/romocart-hack-to-turn-your-living-room.html
The camera is mounted above the floor and takes in visual information, synthesizing it into the best possible racetrack based on the objects placed on the floor. Teapots, books, a teddy bear, pillows and one sleeping prone body are used in the video as examples of object-to-racetrack creation.
A great function of this live action gaming app is the addition of the player as a human instead of a controller. We not only get to see the track as three dimensional objects but can also stomp onto the track to stop missiles that are fired at our cars.
Missiles and bananas are the objects familiar to gamers that allow the two racers to impede the progress of their opponents. Fireworks go off when a racer crosses the finish line and the familiar one, two, three... go beeps are present at the beginning of the race.
RomoCart is incredible as an engineering project and as a gaming project. The target audience is huge across the world and bringing game play into the physical world is amazing. The source code is not yet released for RomoCart but the website says it’s coming soon. This is an expensive, complicated project but the finished product looks worth the effort.
The game is presented at the kawalobo website like an engineering project, complete with a Summary section. The authors tell us that they hope their work will inspire others to start similar undertakings that combine gaming and real world environments.
http://kawalabo.blogspot.jp/2014/10/romocart-hack-to-turn-your-living-room.html