A mixed reality game using 3Pi robots — “PiTanks”

In the growing field of Robotics, one of the many possible paths to explore is the social aspect that it can influence upon the present society. The combination of the goal-oriented development of robots with the interactivity used in games while employing mixed reality is a promising route to take in regard to designing user-friendly robots and improving problem solving featured in artificial intelligence software. In this paper, we present a competitive team-based game using Pololu's 3Pi robots moving in a projected map, capable of human interaction via game controllers. The game engine was developed utilizing the framework Qt Creator with C++ and OpenCV for the image processing tasks. The technical framework uses the ROS framework for communications that may be, in the future, used to connect different modules. Various parameters of the implementation are tested, such as position tracking errors.