Science, Playful Interface Research and Learning
The iBird is a physically engaging and responsive bird flight simulation game. iBird allows players to fly to great heights with the wind in their faces. One literally flap outstretched arms to fly, while seeing an animated bird in flight on a projection screen, mimicking the flapping arms. Player score game points by successfully navigating an aerial obstacle course, while fans blow air at you from different directions to help you feel your speed and direction of flight. iBird was developed as part of our SPIRAL project (Science, Playful Interface Technology, and Learning), to create kid-friendly and physically engaging science games and simulations that combine multiple low-cost game-controllers and custom built input and output devices.
The UnMousePad is a paper thin, flexible multi-touch device about size of a mouse pad. The UnMousePad not only continuously detects a multitude of touches, it also senses varying levels of pressure at a resolution high enough to distinguish multiple fingertips and even the tip of a pen or pencil. Because of its form-factor, it can be used for simple mouse input, for multi-touch gestures, in interactive applications such as games and finger-painting programs.