MAS 962: Interaction Techniques for Virtual Environments

Tuesday, November 17, 1998

Design Analysis: KidsRoom as an example of a strong story environment

Reading: KidsRoom paper

Bobick, A., Intille, S., Davis, J., Baird, F., Pinhanez, C., Campbell, L., Ivanov, Y., Schutte, A.,Wilson, A. (rev. 1998). The KidsRoom: A Perceptually-Based Interactive and Immersive Story Environment, M.I.T. Media Laboratory Perceptual Computing Section Technical Report No. 398 (orginally released June 1996)

WHAT OTHER INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS DID YOU COMPARE KIDSROOM TO AS YOU WERE READING THE PAPER?

• CAVE installation: project floor, ceiling, 3 walls; goggles with LCD shutters for stereo
  • camera
  • war scene, others...
    
• Touchable Stories - Central Square - low tech
  • 15 people at a time
  • anything red could touch or play with
  • lights go on and off to tell you where to go
  • part that reminded of KidsRoom: path they wanted you to follow, boundaries, more or less involved, but by end, sort of know people in group, collaborative
    
• The Veldt - sci-fi story by Ray Bradbury

KIDSROOM VIDEO

• Different environments
  • bedroom-find password
  • forest
  • river-row
  • monsters-dance
    
• Intent to show computer vision application and turned into something more
  
• 8 weeks start to finish
  
• Kids get no instruction other than, "get password" from furniture
  
• Few things moved - have to keep track of - more processing power could keep track of more
  
• "Simple" subtracting (background)
  
• Good at knowing where people were, not perfect at knowing who was who
  
• Lighting MIDI control, story context, know when you need to see and when not
  
• Part not shown in video: Forest; creep around forest, stay in a group, not move when monsters waking up OR monsters would chase kids around
  
• Hints: to help kids learn parameters
  • "hints" were recorded in a different voice (whisper-like)
  • "stay on the path"
  • "stay in a group"
  • Allowed to direct story w/o interrupting narrative
    
• Boat - rowing
  • any movement considered rowing
  • balance of right vs. left movement determined direction of boat
  • speed dependent on how much movement
  • someone off boat
    • narrator, "man overboard"
    • AND definition of rowing changed, could no longer be "any" movement
      
• Kids shaking hands with each other
  • system couldn't tell if kids were actually shaking hands
  • but left in strong enough context, don't need to senseat all and will be right 99% of the time
    
• Monster Dance
  • rugs to prevent occlusion - control where kids stood so not in camera's way of others
  • weakness - overly manipulative, people thought they were sensors
    
• Motion History Images (MHIs) different from previous
  • previously - moving stuff only; problem with motion only: no motion is as good as motion; however when making an arm movment, legs may move slightly sometimes and more vigorously others, pattern on pants can also affect vision - this variance in motion signal hard to account for
  • KidsRoom -background subtraction - foreground/background subtraction handles variances better
    
• Slammed for 2 frames/second, slow graphics (BUT point to NOT have kids focus on screen)

FEEDBACK FROM CLASS ON KIDSROOM PROJECT

What right? What wrong? How do you make KidsRoom II?

• Animation
  
• # of interactions?
  
• Props: addition of props into the room: paddles, ordinary objects taking role in story (bed a good start)
  • implications - computer vision problems, keep track of the items
  • actions w/props could launch activities (stories)
  • have to increase complexity of the sotry
  • benchmark of child's imaginative play to "transform" ordinary objects
  • could "instruct" how to use object like "instruct" how to dance
  • problem w/litter when too many objects
  • is it necessary for system to recognize what is being done/how object being used - does there have to be a consequence for objects to add to experience?
    
• White Board- kids could draw things and have them added to environment, add a tree
  • problem with increased expectations (object recognition, like speech recogition)
  • would disrupt the story
  • debate as to how directed the story should be
  • visually very difficult to recognize objects
  • story tells you what to draw....
  • what is drawn becomes pattern in tree bark or river, part of environment, but not object in environment
  • messages drawn on white board appear on tree, fad w/time (or not)
    
• Personalization
  • can system remember "I" was here last time?
  • other ways to personalize?
  • pair a character with a kid, could select of design ahead of time, "Mr. Potato Head"
  • asked to "invent", input action that caused specific reation, system says, "warn us when evil monsters are coming" or "shoo them away" and then remembers action kids used to be repeated later
  • teach monsters new dance moves? (would work sometimes, say 75% of time)
    
• Rhyming Couplets
  • annoying
  • kept us from giving too much direction (want to avoid too much instruction)
  • sometimes you just want to tell them what to do
    
• Ongoing story or experience
  • currently interactive, but your role is predetermined
  • what if world goes on when you're not there? (Pooh world goes on without Christopher Robin)
  • continuity when return - soap opera analogy
  • how do you do ongoing story?
    • natural time, change month, season, etc. different scenery, environment changes
    • monsters could reference time passage
    • creatures-like autonomous characters that age, learn, etc.
  • with "budget" constraints we can't hire 500 people to create storyboards, graphics, etc.
  • how do you achieve continuity, ongoing story reasonably
    • Simple interactions built on top of another, not necessarily central to the plot
    • Opening the direction/options for moving through the virtual space
    • Is this too much like a video game?
      
• Is now more like a toy - not like a video game: Toys are used over and over, but are not prescripted
  
• Kids House - several rooms
  
• More immersion - floor, ceiling
  
• Sound
  
• Flexibility of storyline / user control of storyline
  
• Speech recognition
  
• If do another...
  • will get away from background subtraction
  • ok to use some additional props from vision aspect BUT worries about interpretting actions

     

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