The Mixed Reality Lab of Singapore has come up with the prototype of a Magic Story Cube to tell bed time stories in an innovative and interactive way. An article in New Scientist explains the principle:
Small cubes connected at various edges compose together a magic cube. They can be unfolded in many ways to uncover a sequence of puzzles or pictures.
To enjoy the story, a virtual reality headset with a small camera is attached to the front. Both the camera and headset are plugged into a software that recognises numbers printed on cubes.
When the user unfolds the cube to reveal a particular numbered square, the computer uses this as its cue to run a segment of audio and animated three-dimensional video, which tells part of the Noah’s ark story.

Arrows printed on the cubes tell the user how to unfold the cube to move to the next scene. Each numbered square that appears then pulls up the relevant video and audio clip. The size of the numbered square is used to determine the exact position of the cube in space relative to the camera so the system knows where to project the images.

Beyond this playful approach, the Lab is also developping educationnal cubes.