Day 81 - Burlington's Augmented Reality Sandbox - Eddie Reis and Jinzhen Hu - BHS Help Desk

This post originally appeared on the BHS Help Desk Blog

One of our major projects this year is our Augmented Reality (AR) Sandbox. Sean Musselman from the Burlington Science Center secured a grant from the Burlington Education Foundation to create this sandbox which changes topography based on movements in the sand from the user. Eddie Reis and Jinzhen Hu (Hugo) worked very hard on it this semester, and we now have a working prototype. The next steps will involve building the actual box and apparatus to hold the computer, projector, and XBox Kinect camera.

WHAT IS THE AR SANDBOX?

The Augmented Reality Sandbox was first developed by the UC Davis W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES, http://www.keckcaves.org), supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL 1114663.

For more information, visit https://arsandbox.ucdavis.edu.

A FEW THINGS ABOUT THIS PROJECT

• Augmented Reality alters the way we see things in real life
• NOT THE SAME AS VIRTUAL REALITY
• Virtual Reality creates a virtual space in which we see things
• How is this AR? Well, it creates a topographic map on sand altering our interpretation of the sand and the way we see it.

WHAT MAKES UP THE BURLINGTON AR SANDBOX?

First, we have the computer (AKA the brains). It houses everything needed to operate the sandbox at the software level and also is the power behind it all allowing us to create these alterations on the map as it happens REAL TIME. The Kinect you see has a depth camera which allows it to use lasers to tell how far or how close something is to the sensor. This allows for measurements of the sand and its height in real time. Next, we have the projector which allows you to see how the computer and code analyze the depth from the Kinect into a topographic map. It just projects what is happening on the computer and just visually represents the map. Using depth, the computer program analyzes heights and draws a map based on the height, at a certain level it will become a hill or mountain, and at certain levels it becomes water.

WHAT ARE WE USING THIS FOR?

Well, this is going to be sent out to elementary schools as a visual representation of a changing world and an easy way to learn about maps and geography. When water simulation (running water) is added it will allow users to “make it rain” and will show the way water moves due to gravity and will also show evaporation!