Human Pacman:

A Mobile Entertainment System with Ubiquitous Computing and Tangible

Interaction over a Wide Outdoor Area

Written by: Adrian David Cheok, Siew Wan Fong, Kok Hwee Goh, Xubo Yang, Wei Liu, Farzam Farzbiz, Yu Li

from National University of Singapore

Presented by: Trevor Young, April 5th, 2004

CPSC 538a Reading List Paper #: 56

Presented at HCI 2003
 

Human Pacman

1. INTRODUCTION

Permeation

of technology into everyday life is made easier when the human experience it creates is made associable with day-to-day encounters. Human Pacman, based on the popular arcade Pacman from the 1980s, is a novel and entertaining game which seeks to bring about such association through stimulating multiple human senses and perception.It is a real-world-physical, social, and wide area mobile entertainment system that is built upon the concepts of ubiquitous computing, tangible human-computer interaction, and wide-area entertainment networks. Human Pacman is pioneering a new form of gaming that anchors on physicality, mobility, social interaction, and ubiquitous computing.

 

The game has several novel aspects: Firstly, the players immerse in role-playing of the characters Pacmen and Ghosts by physically enacting the roles. Players physically move around in a wide-area setting, performing tasks to reach their goals. Utilizing the computing power of wearable computers and the underlying network support, Human Pacman takes mobile gaming to a new level of sophistication by incorporating virtual fantasy and imaginative play activity elements, factors which propelled the popularity of computer games [1] , with the implementation of Mixed Reality on the Head Mounted Displays (HMD). The players also experience seamless connections between real and virtual worlds as immersive first-person augmented reality view (with virtual cookies overlaying the real world) and full virtual reality view of our fantasy version of the game, Pacworld.

 

Secondly, Human Pacman also explores novel tangible aspects of human physical movement, senses and perception, both on the player's environment and on the interaction with the digital world. For example to devour the virtual "enemy", the player has to tap on the real physical enemy's shoulder, which is an instinctive action to "catch" the "enemy".By employing the philosophy of ubiquitous computing [2], we have implemented a system that embeds everyday physical objects with digital fantasy meanings. For example, players have to collect virtual ingredients by intuitively picking up physical sugar jars laid across the game area. These Bluetooth embedded sugar jars when picked up will automatically communicate with the wearable computer by adding the corresponding virtual ingredient to the inventory list of the player.

 

Thirdly, users enjoy unrestricted movement outdoor and indoor while maintaining their social contacts with each other. Players interact both face-to-face with other players when in proximity (physically) or indirectly via the wireless local area network (LAN).
 

Feature	Details
Physical Gaming	Players are physically role-playing the characters of Pacmen and Ghost; with wearable computers donned, they use free bodily movements as part of interaction between each person, and among objects in the real wide area landscapes and virtual environments.
Social Gaming	Players interact both directly with other players when they are in physical proximity, or indirectly via the Wireless LAN network by instant messaging. All Internet users can participate in the game by viewing and collaborating with real Human Pacmen and Ghosts.
Mobile Gaming	Players are free to move about in the indoor \outdoor space without being onstrained to the 2D\3D screen of desktop computers.
Ubiquitous Computing	Everyday objects throughout the environment seamlessly have a real-time fantasy digital world link and meaning. There is automatic communication between wearable computers and Bluetooth devices embedded in certain physical objects used in game play.
Tangible Interaction	Throughout the game people interact in a touch and tangible manner. For example, Players need to physically pick up objects and tap on the shoulder of other players to devour them.
Outdoor Wide-Area Gaming Arena	Large outdoor areas can be set up for the game whereby players carry out their respective missions for the role they play.
Seamless Transition between real and virtual worlds	Players swap freely between immersive first person augmented reality view and full virtual reality view of the Pac-world in the game.

    Table 1: Detail descriptions of each novel features of Human Pacman.
 

Human Pacman ventures to elevate the sense of thrill and suspended disbelief of the players in this atypical computer game. Each of the novel interactions mentioned is summarized in Table 1, and sample photos are shown in Figure 1.

 

Figure 1: Players collaborating in Human Pacman

2. BACKGROUND

 

Human Pacman has its roots in serious research about human's interaction with their physical world. Human, as social creatures find physical interaction, touch, and humanto- human presence essential for the enjoyment of life [3] . In pre-computer age, games were designed and played out in the physical world with the use of real world properties, such as physical objects, our sense of space, and spatial relations. Nowadays computer games focus the user's attention mainly on the computer screen or 2D/3D virtual environment, therefore constraining physical interactions. However, there seems to be a growing interest in physical gaming and entertainment. Commercial arcade games have recently seen a growing trend of games that require human physical movement as part of interaction. For example, dancing games such as Dance Dance Revolution and ParaParaParadise [4] as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: ParaParaParadise dancing computer games users in action

3. REFERENCES

[1] D. Myers. Computer game semiotics, Play and Culture.1991.
[2] M. Weiser. The computer for the 21st century.
    Scientific American, 265:94-100, March 1991.
[3] J. Bowlby. Attachment and loss, volume i: Attachment.
    Basic Book, 1983. New York.
[4] P. Konami Corporation, 2001.

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