Levi-loop Replicates Flappy Bird with Acoustic Levitation, Could One Day Handle a Floating Pac-Man

Engineers at Ultraleap and the University of Glasgow have built a gesture-controlled game, designed to demonstrate an alternative to traditional volumetric displays for 3D visualization.

"Acoustic levitation offers a novel alternative to traditional volumetric displays," the engineers explain of the project's aims. "With state-of-the-art hand-tracking technology, direct interaction and manipulation of levitating objects in 3D is now possible. Further, adding game-elements like completing simple tasks can encourage participant exploration of new technologies.

"We have therefore developed a gesture controlled levitating particle game, akin to the classic wire-loop game, that combines all these elements (levitation, hand-tracking, and gameplay) together with physical obstacles. Further, we have designed a gesture input set that constrains false triggering gestures and dropping of the levitating particle."

The game, dubbed Levi-loop, is a cross between a classic test-your-mettle buzzer-wire game and Flappy Bird: 3D-printed hoops provide obstacles through which a "levitating particle," floating thanks to a two-sided phased ultrasound array built into the unit, must pass in order to score points. Gesture control, meanwhile, is handled using a Leap Motion hand-tracking controller.

"Using the Levi-loop platform," the team concludes, "we plan to investigate the accuracy-speed trade off described by Fitts’s law, multiplayer extensions, and how recent projection mapping techniques coupled with rapid levitation movements can be used together with acoustically transparent obstacles to, for instance, replicate the plethora of maze-like arcade games from the '70s and '80s like Pac-Man."

An initial paper on the project has been published under open-access terms as part of the CHI 2020 Extended Abstracts collection.