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Real Meets Virtual With The AR Drone
Parrot, developers of wireless devices, have recently released the first Augmented Reality game for the AR Drone – a toy helicopter piloted using iPhones and iPads.
The game, AR Pursuit, uses augmented reality to fuse the real and virtual worlds and plays out as a game of cat and mouse with onboard cameras allowing gamers to exchange roles of the “pursuer” by use of ‘on board’ weapons.
Each player can view on the screen of their iDevice what the AR.Drone is ‘seeing’. Each action – a shot received or launched – will also be visualized on the screen via Augmented Reality.
The game lasts for 3 minutes as a default, but can be set up to run for 9 minutes. The winner is the player who escapes for the longest time during the entire game.
Billed as “the first helicopter with automatic flight stabilisation”, the AR Drone was launched in June 2010.
Made of carbon fibre and high resistance PA66 plastic, it is driven by 4 propellers with brushless motors. It can be used outdoors with the rotors unprotected, or indoors with a shield which protects and allows it to bump gently against obstacles without damaging the rotors.
AR Pursuit is available to download in the App Store, priced at $2.99.
"The game uses augmented reality to fuse the real and virtual worlds and plays out as a game of cat and mouse with onboard cameras allowing gamers to exchange roles of the “pursuer” by use of ‘on board’ weapons."