Bella and Rio’s playground
Client
National Aquarium, Etisalat, JDS
Location
National Aquarium, Abu Dhabi
Year
2021
Scope
Development of 2 activations for a children's zone for the National Aquarium.
Project description
We were asked to design a space for a new addition to the National Aquarium called the Bella and Rios Playground. The concept was to create interactive and educational games for children visiting the aquarium.
Our solution
We created two separate interactive games for the space where children can learn more about the inhabitants of the aquarium and the jungle.
INTERACTIVE GAME
A themed rainforest with animals coloured in by the children at the kiosks. The interactivity is that the children touch the animals and they show a "movement reaction" and reveal an interesting fact about the animal.
The children can digitally colour animals from the database. The outline of each animal is given and it can be coloured in with pens from UI. The colours can be selected from a colour wheel and the part with the selected colour can be drawn by hand. The final drawings can be sent to the main screen with real-time rendering, where they appear in the jungle. The same type of animal will loop the same route over and over again until they are overwritten by the new players. Once the animal appears on the screen, visitors can touch the wall and the animal will respond by displaying the facts (speech bubble).
THROW WALL
Using a state-of-the-art lidar sensor capable of detecting objects as small as a fly and scanning at a frequency of 100 Hz, in combination with an ultra-short distance projector, we have developed an interactive game where children can throw plush balls at the wall to destroy the coconuts that the birds throw. The game has proved to be very successful and engaging. Normally, a big problem with similar systems is that they perform poorly because the sensors aren't accurate enough. This isn't the case with this system, as we have managed to achieve instant feedback and tracking. As soon as the ball touches the coconut, we display a cool and interesting fact about the animals of the jungle.