The Interactive Games and Media research lab in Orange Hall (ORN-1385) is a room that truly embraces its purpose. Small, warm and dimly lit, the room embodies a sort of geek chic. Several Alienware computers sit lined up on a table against the wall — though according to Gael Huber, a third year Game Design and Development major, only two of them work. With my “Watchmen” bag and a Mountain Dew in hand, I’m not doing much to help the stereotype.

Although golfing in mid-December may seem absurd, a team of nearly 30 students from four RIT programs is working to develop a virtual golf game themed around RIT. The project will be linked with the putting green outside Gordon Field House during Imagine RIT 2011.
Foster Snell

After a short wait, Erin Mooney, also a third year Game Design and Development major, opens the door and sits down in a rolling chair next to Huber. He sits reserved, yet friendly, while Mooney swivels and shifts in her chair, determined to find a comfortable position. I laugh to myself, still unsure of what to think about the pair.

Despite their cheerful demeanor, Mooney and Huber are hard at work. The duo is involved with a large-scale, multidisciplinary project that aims to design and create an augmented reality golf game. The project’s scope is impressive, drawing 29 students from four of RIT’s eight colleges, as well as a little help from RIT’s Facilities Management Services (FMS).

These two seemingly contradictory gamers hail from two different towns in Ohio. Much like their personalities, they both wound up in the program through wildly different paths. For Huber, the choice was only natural. “I’ve wanted to make games since my freshman year in high school,” he says with vigor. Mooney’s original goal, on the other hand, was to be a biochemical engineer.

During her junior year of high school, Mooney took a sudden interest in animated videos and began to look at colleges in search of such a major. Eventually, she happened upon RIT, but she wasn’t interested in a major in game design until her mother, who sat through one of RIT’s many presentations, convinced her that game design was the major she was looking for.

Mooney swivels in her chair again and looks behind herself. “Did I steal your ‘rolley’ chair?” she asks a fellow student sitting in on the conversation. He replies with a quick refusal, leaving Mooney to ponder the lack of such chairs in the small research lab. In one swift move, the conversation has shifted from majors to swivel chairs. Soon after, Huber successfully brings the focus back to the interview. “But we digress,” he says.

In the past several years, FMS has planned on becoming involved with Imagine RIT, the Institute’s yearly innovation and creativity festival. Ryan Crittenden, an electrician with FMS, proposed a collaboration with the IGM Department on a golf game. Upon first thought, this may not sound like such a fun idea, but the leaders of IGM saw potential.

Crittenden explained that in this game, players would swing a club to hit a virtual ball. The spot where the ball landed would then be represented and marked in the real world. This idea of combining video game and real life elements is called augmented reality, a concept both Mooney and Huber find fascinating and exciting. According to Huber and Mooney, the idea was born when Crittenden, an avid golf fan finally grew tired of bad weather and pricey fees.

The call for interested students began in the fall 2009. A team of 29 assembled for the project, composed of electrical engineers, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, programmers, computer scientists and artists, and of course FMS, who agreed to build the project’s golf “green.” Mooney is currently co-leader of the entire project, and Huber is the lead programmer. With an idea and a team, work could begin.

The first step was to take Crittenden’s idea and determine how to bring it to life. “How could we make this work?” team members often asked themselves. One thing was for certain; they needed a robot. The large group of engineers was asked to create a robot that could take input from the swing of a golf club and predict where the ball would land based on that information. This, of course, is much easier said than done. Although still underway, work has begun on this robotic helper.

Once the robot is complete, another, more important question must be tackled: input. How would one get such technical information from a movement? To solve this dilemma, the team looked towards a device called the AmmSensor, which detects motion and contains valuable and useful measuring components. Among the AmmSensor’s many valuable tools are an accelerometer (acceleration), gyroscope (angle/orientation) and magnetometer (strength/direction). This sensor would be attached to a real golf club, sending that information to the robots. In addition to the club, the player would wear a pair of Vuzix brand augmented reality goggles, allowing them to see the golf course and ball without experiencing the pain of trying to play golf in the snow. The team hopes that the virtual course will be familiar to RIT’s many students: the campus, rendered into a functional golf course.

Brian Grosso and Kevin Mesolella mount sensors on a putter for the “Virtual Golf” project. The project will be on exhibition at Imagine RIT 2011.
Foster Snell

Probably the most challenging part of this project is devising a system that will accurately read all the necessary information from the swing of a golf club. Though the AmmSensor will help, it won’t tell them everything. Currently, the team is still tossing around ideas about how to tackle this problem.

“This [project] will make an excellent résumé piece and will hopefully be something for RIT [students] to experience,” says Mooney. “This is mostly a student project we are hoping to take to conferences.” Although it could potentially be offered for sale in the future, the duo mentioned that won’t happen anytime soon.

Huber says the most memorable moments working with this project involved “finding out what the idea behind the project was.” He elaborates, saying, “All this new technology and being able to work with augmented reality is very awesome.” After listening to Mooney’s opinion on the matter, Huber remembered another standout moment. He described a time when he and his team were working on figuring out a way to take input from the golf club using a simulator called the Dancin’ Dogg OptiShot. The simulator was apparently ridiculously complicated, forcing his team to spend two weeks messing without any progress. After many fruitless tests, the team finally managed to reverse-engineer their way to success. A feeling of satisfaction still sticks with Huber, who called the process “exhilarating.”

It’s December, and Imagine RIT is only five months away. While most students simply attend class, go to parties and battle the harsh Rochester winter, Mooney and Huber must also wrestle with robots, golf greens and virtual reality. Within the four dimly lit walls of the IGM research lab, Mooney, Huber and 27 other students dream on, hoping to leave their mark on a golf course somewhere nearby.