Supporting distributed multiplayer RoboTable games

Abstract

Lincoln University is cooperating with Tufts University, USA, on the development of a RoboTable to facilitate interaction between groups learning about robotics and engineering problem solving. A RoboTable is a mixed reality tabletop learning environment and provides a distributed learning platform with groups of children at remotely located tables interacting and competing on robotic projects. This project investigates the development and support of distributed multiplayer games using the RoboTable environment. Currently, there are no general-purpose tools to support RoboTable game development or distributed game play. Hence a gap exists to develop a robust solution that will allow distributed multiplayer games to be created and played using RoboTable. To address these issues, we have implemented a set of toolkits to support distributed multiplayer RoboTable game development. The toolkits comprise a Network Toolkit, a Robot Tracking Toolkit, a Game Management Toolkit and a Communication Toolkit. In addition, we have developed a skeleton project to help the game developers. To evaluate the toolkits, we have used a number of approaches. The first approach was a case study of the game development process using the toolkits. The second approach was to establish baseline performance benchmarks for the system. The third approach was to carry out experiments to evaluate their real-world performance and the scalability of the toolkits using the game created in the case study. The results from the experiments have shown that the toolkits perform well within a distributed computer environment. The results from the case study have revealed that the development of a new RoboTable game is straightforward.