SMALLab New York was invited by David Birthfield, the creator of SMALLab, to participate a weekend exhibition at Arizona Museum of Science. We were challenged to create a game scenario using a Roomba robot. Thanks to David, most of the framework and pipeline was already set up for bringing in the famous robot, all we have to do on the technology part is just tweaking the code to perfection.
Initially, we were looking into player-controlled map navigation because of the nature of Roomba, it goes places. Claudio did a few iterations on this idea and had Roomba walking on maps and some amazing over-size photography. Our second idea was to remove the player control from the Roomba and have it roam free in the space through simple algorithm. This was where the fun started to pour out. We decided to assign Roomba a goal to achieve in the SMALLab space and players become Roomba’s guardians against enemies in the way.
The game scenario is called SWARM. It is a 2 player + 1 robot game. Players has to guide the Roomba mother ship through a swarm of alien wasps. Player 1 has the ability to attract Roomba while player 2 repels dangerous wasps with its high-frequency pulse wave. Little do we know, younger kids went crazy with the wasps on the floor projection. Regardless if they are playing or not, all of them are helping the Roomba by stomping those wasps with their feet. We had a great time visiting Arizona museum of Science and working with the SMALLab crew there. At one point, there were about 18 busful of kids storm through our exhibition with their parents, and about 1500 peoples in total over the course of two days according to the museum.