WeBlimp to soar at Olympics
posted: february 4. 2010
SFU’s WeBlimp takes to the air
This article is from the Surrey Leader: http://www.bclocalnews.com/surrey_area/surreyleader/community/83381772.html
Nathan Waddington, Anna Wu, Brian Quan and Andrew Thong display a prototype of their WeBlimp, an interactive aircraft.
By Sheila Reynolds - Surrey North Delta Leader
Updated: February 02, 2010 3:47 PM
It's a flying airship that resembles a blimp. There’s a gondola attached to the balloon-like craft and three small propellers that give it power. But this blimp, which is over a metre in length, also has a tiny camera attached to it.
The free-flying, helium-filled aircraft, called WeBlimp, was created by students Andrew Thong, Anna Wu, Brian Quan and Nathan Waddington, initially as part of a body interface course in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU’s Surrey campus last year.
But the students have spent the past number of weeks rebuilding the WeBlimp, making it more durable for its first major public outing – the Olympics.
The WeBlimp will be part of a multi-day arts and culture showcase at the Surrey 2010 Celebration site in Holland Park. For five days, the public will be able to see the blimp in action – and possibly be a key participant in the airship’s action.
The blimp will be entirely crowd controlled, essentially placing a person, or several people, in the driver’s seat. Here’s how it works:
In one room, called the “flight room” will be the blimp, and possibly people observing the airship.
In a second room, called the “control room” will be a screen projecting what the blimp’s camera sees. Anyone in the control room will have the ability to “coax” the blimp to move a certain way through their movements. A “camera tracking system” in the control room sends a message to a laptop which is then sent wirelessly to the aircraft, essentially giving the blimp directions.
Participants react to what they see on screen and the blimp responds to what the participants do.
“Their position in the room is going to control where the blimp will go,” explains Waddington. “The interesting thing is if you have more than one person in the room – what if one person wants to go one way and two others want to go another way?”
The WeBlimp, therefore, is a study in social interaction and crowd collaboration.
Inspiration for the aircraft came, at least in part, from the Eye of Kilrogg, a free-flying entity in the popular online game World of Warcraft that the player controls remotely from his or her character.
“Seeing that this disembodiment also exists in radio controlled vehicles, we strived to design an interaction that would bridge this gap and promote ludic activities,” explains Quan. “The end result, a blimp that is steered by shifting the collective weight of participants.”
The project and its concepts were already accepted and presented to the ACM Creativity & Cognition Conference at the University of California-Berkeley last October.
In Surrey, the Zeppelin-like craft will fly in a 20’ x 20’ tent area, hopefully with visitors from around the world trying it out.
While at least one of the SFU students will be on site to supervise the blimp and its users each day, for the most part they plan on being observers only. After all, the project is all about social interaction and how people work with one another.
“There’s also that aspect of uncontrolled fun,” Wu adds.
The WeBlimp will be at the Celebration Site from Feb. 17-21.
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