Daniel Campos Zamora

Magic Bench

A Social AR/MR Experience

Image of a person and animated elephant sitting on a wood bench against a white backdrop. The elephant is looking at the person and handing over a golden orb.
Studio photo showing a clean, minimal white bench.
Photo showing the underside of the bench which has been instrumented with speakers and transducers.
Screenshot showing how the camera feed is segmented into depth. The image shows a 3d scene where the person is reaching to the side and there is a white shadow behind them cast on a wall showing occlusion.
A group of people on the bench with a virtual rain and flood scene is rendered.
Animated GIF showing a person sitting on the magic bend and a virtual elephant sitting on the other end of the bench. The elephant is snoring as they sleep, and some wave lines show how the sound is coming from the bench as the elephant snores. The person reaches out to feel the bench and the vibrations.
Year
2022
Type
Research
Collaborators
Disney Research

Many augmented reality and mixed reality applications depend on hardware that can lead to isolating, single-user experiences. Instead of instrumenting the person, we instrumented the environment so that we can engage everyone in a group. This sets a stage shared by the participants and the characters where they can seamlessly walk-up and interact with each other.

people see a mirror image of themselves and the scene on A large monitor in front of the bench. A camera and depth sensor mounted alongside the screen provide data to make a 3D reconstruction the scene which is rendered back onto the screen. The bench is calibrated in relation to the camera, depth sensor and monitor so that along with skeleton tracking, we can put the participants and virtual characters in the same scene. The bench is outfitted with actuators and other hardware to provide haptic feedback to the people in the scene.

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