Monkeybridge is a collaborative Augmented Reality game, where users do not have direct influence on the characters’ behaviour; instead they indirectly control their movement by providing the agents with building blocks to walk on above the virtual ocean.

The characters make autonomous decisions based on their observation of an AR environment in which they are embedded. They can choose the path the walk on; decide how to get from one platform to the other, e.g. climb or jump when there is a slight difference in height between platform edges; automatically choose the straightest path from several available tiles; and fall into the water if there is no suitable piece of landing stage to walk on.

The game serves as a pilot application to examine how “smart” software and hardware components capable of observing and reacting to events in the physical and virtual world can be useful in AR applications.

By István Barakonyi, Markus Weilguny, Thomas Psik, Dieter Schmalstieg.

Video.
PDF presenting the project.