Softkinetic 3D Gesture Recognition for Games and Rehabilitative Play

Taking 3D interaction further, Softkinetic has developed middle-ware that uses a 3D camera to support full-body gesture interaction with games and other applications. No controllers or devices are needed!



The following video is narrated in Portuguese, I, think, but you can understand the content in any language. I you love the Wii, you'll probably like this!


Here is a video that demonstrate how Softkinetic and Silverfit paired together to develop rehabilitative games for the elderly and others:


The following table is from the Silverfit website:

Game	Movement trained
Puzzle	While sitting down, bend whole body left and right, and stand up. Cognitive/visual component.
Mole	Balance exercise by stepping with one leg while standing.
Catching grapes	Walking movement left and right.
Walking	Walking in place, while avoiding obstacles and thresholds. Activity of Daily Life (ADL) component.
Arm exercise	Arm stretching and reaching in all directions with one or both arms. ADL component.
Picking flowers	Walking backwards, forwards and sideways. Optionally, bending down.
Memory	Arm stretching left, right, forwards and upwards. Cognitive component.

RELATED

Softkinetic and Silverfit Introduce Senior-Targeted Gaming
(Danny Cowan, Gamasutra, 12/19/08)

Softkinetic's Gesture-Based Interactive TV Action:

Update on Accessibility and Interactive Games

It has been a while since I shared information about accessible games. If you are a parent of a child or teen with a disability, if you have a disability, or if you hope to keep on gaming through your golden years no matter what ails you, keeping an eye on innovations in this field is worth your time.

The following descriptions are from the IGDA Game Accessibility Special Interest Group blog:

Global Assisitive Technology Wiki - AbilityNet Gate

Via One Switch:
"AbilityNet have put together a wonderful open project called the Global Assisitve Technology Wiki or GATE for short. In their words:

"GATE is actually a Wiki, which is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. It's a little like Wikipedia, but just concentrating on assistive technology. GATE is very simple to use, with a control panel enabling you to add content and more. More about Wikis . . .

This wiki has been created by AbilityNet, the UK's largest provider of advice and information on all aspects of Access to technology. The purpose of the wiki is to provide live and up to date information on all aspects of Assistive Technology."

"A really good place to start is their Switch Systems entry here. They are lacking their own accessible games section so hopefully someone (maybe me) will take up the gauntlet for that soon."

Mystic Mine Multi-player One Switch Game

"Just released this February - Mystic Mine is now available to buy on-line at Koonsolo for $19.95 (use www.xe.com for a currency conversion). It is massive fun as a multi-player game and highly recommended by OneSwitch.org.uk. If I had an all time top 10 list of one-switch games this would be a strong contender to make the list. Free demo version available here. Sweet." -posted by One-Switch Games on the Game Accessibility blog

Subtitles: Increasing Game Accessibility (Link to GamaSutra article)

Sip/Puff Mobile Phone Games?

"Pantech is one of three giant mobile phone manufacturers in Korea, among them Samsung and LG. Pantech sold over 10 million phones internationally in 2008, and under the "Sky" brand in the local market. Now, it's about to launch a blow-controlled mobile phone, the IM-S410K, which is also known as the Sky Wind." "Looks like it's got potential for some fun accessible games using sip/puff control." Link Via: Thomas Westin at IGDA GASIG Mailing List, via OneSwitch Games

Stevie Wonder calls for accessible technology

"Stevie Wonder is calling for greater access in technology: "[technology] being more accessible is always a plus and I think really, for various companies ... making it exciting and accessible for people who can see, it would take very little to make it accessible to everyone. So I encourage all the manufacturers to do that."

"When you can ... make it accessible and make it possible, you should just include that in the overall picture. ". Link via: Mike Taylor of Excitim.

Accessible Games Controller Video



Games for Health Trailer

GASIG Links

• IGDA
• IGDA GASIG
• IGDA GASIG Mailing List
• AbleGamers
• Accessible Gaming Shop
• AGRIP
• Audio Games
• D-Gamer
• Deaf Gamers
• Game-Accessibility.com
• Games[cc]
• Help You Play
• OneSwitch.org.uk
• OneSwitch.org.uk Blog
• Pin Interactive
• Retro Remakes
• Robert Florio
• UA-Games
• 7-128 Software

Game Accessibility Forums

• AbleGamers
• Audio Games
• Deaf Gamers
• Eye Tracker Forum
• IGDA GASIG
• Game-Accessibility

Other Links from the GASIC blog:

• Alt-Controls.com
• AssistiveGaming.com
• COGAIN
• Future Making Serious Games
• Game Forward
• The Gaming Kitsune
• NAMCO Rehabilitainment
• Special Effect
• Tera-Kirk Blog

More Interactive Physics: Crayon Physics Deluxe - Trailer from Kloonigames

Kloonigame's Crayon Physics Deluxe is a fun, interactive physics game that works well on a touch screen. It is not as complex as Algodoo, as it doesn't require the player to interact with lots of settings.

The above video is of the commercial version of the game. It is a labor of love by Petri Purho, of Helsinki, Finland. You can find Petri's games on the Kloonigame's website, including the free version. Crayon Physics won an award at the 2008 Independent Games Festival.

Website: Kloonigames
Article: Indulge your inner child with 'Crayon Physics': Wonderful game looks like it was plucked from a 5-year-old's coloring book (Winda Benedetti, MSNBC 1/13/09)

Bloom - Play Music with Colors: Seth Sandler's relaxing little on-line application!

Bloom: Play music with colors (link to application)

For more information about Seth Sandler's work, visit his AudioTouch website.

Here are a few pictures of his applications:








Seth integrates music into his multi-touch applications, as he has a background in both music and art. He is a member of the NUI-Group.

If you like Spore, you'll appreciate the Genetic Algorithm website!

Since I've been playing Spore and thinking about the the artificial life/genetic algorithm used to create the Black Shoals Stock Market Planetarium (see my previous post), I thought I'd visit the
Philippe Rennard's interactive genetic algorithms website I first visited his site when I was taking a course in artificial intelligence for game design.



The first time I visited the site, I viewed it from a small laptop screen. This time, I expored the site on my 22-inch HP Touchsmart. What a difference! I can't wait until the school week to see how this looks on an interactive whiteboard.

Although the website was created several years ago, it still is fun site to visit, especially when you watch all of your little things morph according to the variables you choose.

Another website I recently revisited was the NERO website. NERO stands for Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives. The original NERO project was developed at the University of Austin a few years ago. The latest version can be found on the NERO 2.0 website.

If you have some time on your hands, visit the site and download the program. You use genetic algorithms to train up soldiers in using real-time neuro evolution. See what happens if you let them evolve overnight on your computer!


"Evolve your own robot army by tuning their artificial brains for challenging tasks, then pit them against your friends' teams in online competitions"

Somewhat Related

While I was at Rennard's website, I linked to his page about a book he edited in 2006 that I want to run out and read ASAP. "Handbook of Research on Nature Inspired Computing for Economics and Management". I think this will help book might help me with my quest to better inform myself about the events surrounding the economic situation.

I'm sharing what I find on my Technology Supported Human-World Interaction blog using one of my recent posts to store my collection of pictures, media, quotes, articles, references, and links related to the quest. I hope to incorporate this, hopefully with the help of others, into a dynamic, interactive web-based time-line of the history we are living through right now. For now, here is the link to the "repository":

The Celestial Economic Sphere, DataViz for the Finance Biz, Truthiness, Behavioral Finance, and Greed

Lazybrains 3D game: Another Brain-Computer Interface!

I came across an article about the BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) 3D game, Lazybrains, on the Wired website today. "Brain Scanners, Fingercams Take Computer Interfaces Beyond Multitouch"

LazyBrains was a Digital Media Senior Project of Aaron Bohenick, James Borden, Sachary Brooks, Kenneth Oum, and Jordan Santell, students at Drexel University.

Here is a video:

Game Teaser


Description of the BCI, a fNIR:

• "The Functional Near-Infrared Imaging Device (fNIR) is a technology that was developed at the University of Pennsylvania, but is currently being used by the Drexel University biomedical department. The device shines infrared light into the user's forehead, and records the amount of light that gets transmitted back. The change in the amount of light can be used to deduce information about the amount of oxygen in the blood. When the user concentrates, their frontal lobe needs more oxygen and this change can be detected by the device."

For more information, see the Voxel6 website.


Here is a link to a post about a similar BCI system:
Emotive System's Neural Game Controller Headset: Human-Computer Interface of the Future?

It will be interesting to see how this technology unfolds. In my opinion, it will be quite useful for cognitive rehabilitation, as well as providing access to games for people who have significant physical limitations.

Game Based Learning: Second European Conference

The 2008 Second European Conference on Game-Based Learning will be held in Barcelona, Spain, October 16-17, hosted by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

Speaker Bios

Conference Program

If you are working in a K-12 setting and interested in sharing your ideas about game-based learning, please leave me a message. I'm especially interested in how interactive games support engaged, meaningful learning.

Multi-touch Crayon Physics

Also posted on the TSHWI blog:
Watch how you can draw simple shapes that can instantly turn into a game!


Multitouch Crayon Physics from multitouch-barcelona on Vimeo.
For a better version of this video, see http://www.vimeo.com/980528 For more information, see the RXSurface blog post. On May 18, Multi touch crayon physics will be offered as an alphabeta opensource! The people behind RXSurface are members of the Natural User Interface (NUI) group:
"Natural User Interface or ~ NUI Group is an interactive media group researching and creating open source machine sensing techniques to benefit artistic and educational applications."

Via Tech Psych: Accessible Learning through Entertainment and Recreation - Resources for free or low cost games and applications

The people at Simply Entertainment/ 7-128 Software, make "mainstream, family-friendly, computer games that are designed from the ground up to be accessible to gamers with a variety of special needs, including: blindness, low vision, color blindness, deafness, and motion impairment".

They recently added a free on-line service for people searching for free or low-cost accessible computer games suitable for learning or rehabilitative environments.

According to the website, the Accessible Learning through Entertainment and Recreation service provides the following useful information:

• Where to get those games, at low cost, or for free
• What to look for in selecting those games, quickly and with fewer costly mistakes
• How to apply those games to your learning objectives, without a lot of mystery
• Who to go to for free help

"This information will be updated over the course of 2008, especially the growing series of How To articles."

Another resource on the Simply Entertainment/1-129 Software website is a section dedicated to links to 25 highest-rated websites that focus on games that are accessible for people who are blind. Many of the linked websites offer free on-line games.

Thanks to John Bannick and his colleagues at 7-128!