What is Project ARO?

Project ARO is the combination of real-world objects and computer science to create a mixed reality.

Mixed Reality? How?

We track objects of the real world with a range-camera (Microsoft Kinect) and integrate them into the digital world. An interaction with a tracked object allows an interaction with the digital world, thus creating a mixed reality.

Why?

We want to go past the limit of standard interaction (controller, mouse and keyboard) and allow a direct interaction with the digital world. By showing the limitless possibilites we want to enthuse possible students for computer-science.

Wow. Awesome. But what did you do exactly?

Good you ask. We created an Augmented Reality Tower Defense Game (or short AR-TD-G).The theme of the game is - of course - the digital world. For the visuals we took the movie Tron and the game Frozen Synapse as inspiring examples. Matrix is also nice but also kinda overused. You might ask why a game - the anwser is simple: We love games. We are all gamers (Some more, some less). We believe that games are the best representation of computer science and we also believe that there are many young men (and women) out there that think the same and also thought about giving computer-science a try but were turned off by the dust-dry study courses - we want to change that. We want to show that computer-science is fun.

What is Tower Defense?

Tower Defense is a widely spread and as fun recognized type of fast real-time-strategy. The core principle of the game is very easy. You defend a goal - your server - by building a labyrinth and placing firewall-towers. Evil pieces of software (represented by spheres) will spawn and try to reach your goal. They run through the labyrinth whilst your firewall-towers shoot at them. If they reach your goal you will lose data integrity. If your integrity reaches 0 you lose. Easy right?

But where is the augmented reality in that? What do i do?

You can use anything to build the labyrinths, the wooden blocks we give you but also your shoes or even your purse (Just dont completely block the path, or the evil software will do some more evil things). You can also build towers with the wooden blocks we give you. For that you simply stack blocks on each other (Two blocks on each other are towers).

I really want to play the game, where can i find it?

The project is usually located in the Hochschule Worms, room N242 (N-Building).

What now?

If you want to continue the development of the project we already collected some cool features the project could be enhanced with - what are you waiting for? Enlist now!