Augmented Reality & Mobility

OutRun video game vehicle
This project leads the way for other augmented-reality mobility platforms.

Garnet Hertz, a research scientist at the Centre for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds, ics.uci.edu turns the 1980’s driving arcade game Sega Outrun into an electric vehicle. Operating on streets while using the video game monitor provides an augmented forward view that may help people with visual impairments.

Youtube video youtube.com/UCIBrenICS#p/u/4/zd-t7WoshS4

Garnet Hertz - research scientist in informatics
“The project started with thinking what would it be like if this driving arcade game could actually drive. ... A number of pieces of software that run here that look in front of the car, try to interpret what the features there are in front of the car. In this case it looks specifically for roads, and then it draws that road shape in the style of the original video game. So this software that is running looks like the old video game but its actually an augmented reality type of system that tries to make the real world look like a video game from the 1980’s.”

Walt Scacchi - Research Director at the Centre for computer games and virtual worlds at the University of California at Irvine
“...one of the things that is starting to arise from it is whole new ways of thinking about how game-based virtual worlds can be embodied into physical devices in order to create new experiences. One of the things that may come from the outrun project are new ways of associating game-based therapies for people who might be limited to electric chair assisted mobility, kids who have limited mobility ...may be able to take advantage of this technology if we can get it embodied in, rather than the form of an arcade machine, also in the form of a powered wheelchair.”

Garnet Hertz' website conceptlab.com