Camera Driven Table Tennis for Mobile Phones

the eFinland Weblog

Helsinki, 15 April, 2005 — Mobile games markets are growing rapidly, and camera phones are expected to open up new opportunities for game developers. Up to date, however, mobile games have not made much use of the phone's camera for game control and interaction. To show the way, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland decided to develop a wireless table tennis game "SymBall" for mobile phones.

The SymBall game enables people to play virtual table tennis against each others using mobile camera phones as rackets! The game demonstrates how the integrated cameras are already usable for interaction on mobile phones, with real time performance. Data communication between the players is handled using Bluetooth, but the implementation would in principle allow for using slower radio links too. As optional features SymBall provides ball speed, racket shape, sounds, etc.

The phone's display shows the virtual table, net, ball and the rackets. Moving or tilting the phone moves the player's virtual racket in the phone's display. The phone's movement is determined by following the location of a colored pattern in the camera image.

The game's control color can be selected from predefined ranges of red/green/blue, or let the SymBall software find a suitable color automatically. Suitable color objects for controlling the game are practically always easy to find in the player's natural environment, e.g., pens, credit cards, candy bars or whatever. Also, the players may choose to use the opponent's colored clothes for racket control, thus body movement adds a new physical dimension to the game.

VTT believes feature detection algorithms on camera phones will find various other uses in the future, and the SymBall game will be used to demonstrate VTT's further research results in the area. "Generally thinking, camera controlled interaction could subsistute the joystick for any other application as well", claims Dr. Charles Woodward of VTT.

The SymBall game is currently implemented on Symbian OS/Series 60 camera phones. 3D OpenGL ES enhancements to SymBall are being developed in co-operation of VTT and the embedded graphics technology company Hybrid Graphics Ltd. in Finland.

VTT presented the SymBall game among other interested topics at CeBit, Hannover in March 2005.

Further information:

Charles Woodward, Research Professor
VTT Information Technology, Finland
Tel. +358-40 500 1514

More information
Charles.Woodward@vtt.fi
http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/

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