An alternative controller for AR that allows users to quickly swap between equipment by switching handles

Overview

This project was made as part of Pinnacle, the national "olympics of hackathons", and won second place overall. The controller is 3d printed and features 3 unique handle grips: crossbow, sword, and shield. To demonstrate the controller we created a game in Unity where players must survive waves of enemies. The controller detects which handle is being gripped and swaps equipment accordingly in the game.

Development

The controller was modeled in SolidWorks and printed on a Lulzbot 3d printer. The handles are designed to be easily swappable so the controller could be used for a variety of use cases. The AR headset used is the Magic Leap and the game was built in the Unity game engine. Each handle of the controller contains a light dependent resistor connected to an Arduino Nano 33 IoT which sends sensor data to the AR application through a TCP web server. The controller features a hollow body for housing the electronic components as well as the Magic Leap controller for 6 DOF tracking.

Gameplay

Enemies are spawned randomly around the player in waves of three. Players can kill the enemy by either slashing it close up with the sword or hitting it from afar with an arrow from the crossbow. Players can also use the shield to block enemy attacks. Blocking an enemy protects the player from damage and also pushes the enemy back a short distance.