Mobile Dance Revolution

Mobile Dance Revolution (MDR) is an exploration of taking traditional console/arcade games into the mobile world through the use of body worn sensors and real-time recognition on mobile phones. MDR was an end result of my summer internship with Motorola Labs. The game was developed on the Motorola E680g phone. The first version of the game was played with the use of a dance pad which communicated to the phone via bluetooth. This game was later shown at LinuxWorld and CTIA by Motorola Labs.

Later versions of the game make use of two bluetooth accelerometers. They are attached to the shoes of the player using plastic housings. With the addition of the bluetooth accelerometers we changed the rules of the game so instead of stepping you kick in the direction of the arrow.

Demo Video

Thoughts

Syncing the results of the accels w/ the game play proved difficult due the time delay between recognition of the kick and scoring feedback. It will also be nice to see this expanded over multiple people (i.e. line dancing).

Update:

Iterations on this game are now being pursued in cooperation with Humana and students of the GVU. We hope to deploy a mobile, sensor based fitness game to local high school students to encourage physical activity.