Current Project Ideas

Sample games interm report (Game Design & Concept documents included as appendices - Mark Dunne, 2008

Sample games final year project

Title: Electronic music arrangement and composition software for blind and visually impaired users
Abstract:
Programs like eJay allow musicians and non-musicians alike to arrange music. These programs typically have a number of tracks that a user can arrange pre-recorded sound files on. They typically come with several thousand sound samples. The programs are geared for the creation of electronic dance music. This project would involve the creation of an alternative system specifically for use by blind and visually impaired users. It could use a number of feedback and control mechanisms, such as speech technology, or haptic feedback devices such as vibrating mice or joysticks.

A variation on this project: To develop software to allow a person with limited articulation to participate in a trad session. Maybe this could involve the user triggering appropriate chords or chord progressions, Or tapping a simple rhythm on switch that gets translated into more complex bodhran rhythms
Tags: Computer Music, Imagine Cup

Title: Smart/Augmented Wheelchair for wheelchair users
Abstract:
The aim of this project would be to augment a wheelchair with smart technology, such as an embedded computer and sensors on to provide navigational guidance while entering tight spaces or reversing and give feedback for dangerous driving conditions, obstacles ahead such as dropped curbs or bumps in terrain. GPS, mapping and self drive could also be considered. There is some research underway in the DMC that could be incorporated into this project. See also this article.
Tags: Universal Design, Imagine Cup

Title: Smart accessible home environment
Abstract:
Using sensors, novel input technologies such as speech and automation technology around the home,this project would try to anticipate the occupants needs and requests. The system could also be used to assist with reordering food or other supplies. It would be able to detect a low supply of an item, provide information to the user regarding purchasing options, provide details of user bank credit, make suggestions to the user and order items when confirmed by the user. See also this project.
Tags: Universal Design, Imagine Cup

Title: Novel text to speech controller interface
Abstract:
The aim of this project is to improve on the interface for a speech output device (think of Stephen Hawkins). The interface would incorporate modern graphics - maybe a 3D metaphor for selecting words and letters. It would be controllable using a switch, or possibly eye tracking. The second aim of this project would be to improve the quality of the generated speech by incorporating prosody and expressiveness. You would would work with the Audio Research group in DIT on this aspect of the project.
Tags: Universal Design, Imagine Cup.

Title: Notoriety Sound beam game
Abstract:
A balance game making use of sound beam technology. See this game concept document written by PhD student and DT228 graduate Mark Dunne:

The game play will revolve around the user playing notes on the Sound Bar (music notes obviously), each unique note will have a unique shape wrapped around it and in the center of the shape will be the sheet music symbol that represents the note being played. The idea of using geometric shapes and the sheet music symbol is so the user can link the shapes with the musical note. (Eventually as the game progresses the shapes may even disappear and the sheet music symbol may only remain. This would be a very advanced level and this is where we can then teach pieces of music to the user.) The colour of each note will vary on the pitch it is being played at, so a colour scale of blue for low pitch frequencies to red for high pitch frequencies might work. There could also be variations on that too like the shape may vibrate, stretch or skew to indicate that the note is being played with a quiver, shake or varying pitch (not sure of technical wording for all these musical things).

So as the game progresses notes fitting into the description outlined above will appear on the left hand side of the screen, the note the user is making will appear on the right hand side of the screen. If the the user's hands are not in the sound bar's field of vision (FOV), there will be no note on the right side of the screen. The user will have to put there hands into the sound bar FOV and try replicate the note been played on the left hand side of the screen. These notes are generated by the computer and will start off basic and move into more advanced variations as the user progresses. Points will be scored on how fast they find and hit the note and how well they held the note for the given period of time. The points system may only be that the user gets a point for each note played and progresses onto the next. Obviously as the game progresses the levels of accuracy required will increase and one would expect that user would become better with experience.

As this game would be mostly for disabled children/adults mostly, there could be some sort of machine learning algorithm in there to analyse the user performance and their performance measure would indicate the level of hardness and accuracy required to progress onto new notes. This would level the playing field so the speak, scoring would remain the same for everyone, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. I see this scoring system as key to making the game a success, it would mean an able bodied person could compete with a disabled person and they both would score in a similar range. There would be no easy, medium or hard settings.
Tags: Universal Design, Imagine Cup

Title: Motion Capture Tai Chi Tutor
Abstract:
Long form Tai Chi is a 108 movement sequence designed to improve health in mind and body. The aim of this project would be to use motion capture to capture a human expert performing the sequence of movements in 3D. The motion capture could then be used to animate a 3D model. In order to be useful to a learner it should be possible to control the model using speech to perform actions such as rotating (so that the character can be viewed from any angle), speeding up, slowing down advancing to the next move and so on.

A variation on this project: To capture correct exercise and lifting movements for use by a person recovering from orthopedic surgery. This could also be made into some sort of a game.
Tags: Digital Games, Imagine Cup

Title: Power House
Abstract:
Power house is a game that puts the player in charge of managing the power consumption in a house over the course of the day. Again there would be tasks to be achieved such as cooking the dinner, washing clothes etc. A first step in researching this game would be to monitor the power usage of various domestic appliances. The house could have sims like avatars that have various needs and that switch on devices and leave them on and you would have to try and minimise the power consumption of your avatars. The game could be scaled up to managing several houses, and up to say a factory or a hospital. The purpose of the game would be to teach people about the relationship between their power consumption and their carbon footprint, which would get bigger the more power they use.
Tags: Digital Games, Imagine Cup

Title: Kid squash
The aim would be to bring children across a road. Could use gory, particle physics and audio to show the consequences of loosing the game. Could equally be developed for cyclists to encourage them to cycle safely.
Tags: Digital Games, Imagine Cup

Title: Bar Fly
Some kind of game to show the long term effects of the abuse of alcohol. The aim of the game is to find activities for the character to keep the game character out of the pub. Too much pub and the characters health suffers.

A variation of this would be an anti smoking game.
Tags: Digital Games, Imagine Cup

Title: Trad tunes similarity matrix
Abstract:
There are over 7000 traditional dance tunes. These are all available in electronic format in ABC notation. Many tunes have similar parts. This project is about generating a similarity matrix to try and find relationships between tunes. Various distance functions could be evaluated (edit distance, earth movers distance, Euclidian distance, compression distance etc) and these should be made transposition invariant. This program could also incorporate some nice 3D visualisations to navigate the relationships between tunes
Tags: Computer Music, Graphics

Title: Avatar visualisation of flute music performance
Abstract:
The aim of this project would be to analyse audio of a musician playing the flute - extract the note onsets and the pitches and reproduce the movements necessary to produce this audio on a visualisation of a 3D avatar playing the instrument. It should be possible to slow down and speed up the audio and corresponding movements so that a beginner could observe the movements and learn them.
Tags: Computer Music, Graphics, Imagine Cup

Title: Improving transcription accuracy by using note ngrams
Abstract:
See my page about my computer music research to read more about my work on transcription of traditional Irish dance tunes. The aim of this project would be analyse a corpus of traditional Irish dance tunes to extract the note ngrams and use these to try to minimise transcription errors.
Tags: Computer Music

Title: Virtual session
Abstract:
A web application that would allow traditional musicians around the world to meet up and play tunes together virtually. This project should make use of JackTrip, which is technology for streaming synchronous audio over the net.
Tags: Computer Music

Title: iTunePal
Abstract:
This is two projects. One is to port TunePal Mobile to the iPhone platform. The second is to port my query-by-playing technology: tunepal.org to the iPhone and combine them into iTunePal. This project would be immense benefit to the traditional music community. It would be developed in Objective C, C++ and C.
Tags: Computer Music, Mobile software development

Title: Tooth Kind
Abstract:
An XNA game where the goal is to keep a set of teeth clean. The teach would eat, acid would build in the mouth and attach the enamel. Also bacteria would infect the gums if left too long without cleaning. The teeth would eventually rot and gum disease would ensue. To counter this the player would have to correctly brush the teeth and floss and arrange dental visits to fix fillings. This would be an XBOX 360 XNA game aimed at children. Children playing the game would learn about oral hygiene.

Variation on this idea: An anti-smoking game
Tags: Digital Games, Imagine Cup

Title: Thunderbird plugin for Windows Desktop Search
Abstract:
Windows Desktop search doesn't support the indexing of Thunderbird emails. The aim of this project would be to use the Thunderbird source code and the Windows Desktop Search SDK to develop a plug in to allow this. Also, the Windows Sidebar needs a decent plugin for Google Calendar and Thunderbird email.
Tags:

Title: DogBot
Abstract:
My dog loves to fetch things. He is obsessed with it. The aim of this project would be to develop a Robot that could throw a ball for a dog to fetch. The Robot should be capable of picking up the ball when the dog returns it and issuing speech commands to the dog. It should be possible to augment an existing robot to do this, for example RoboQuad or Lego Mindstorms.
Tags: Robots

Title: Robot simulation using the Open Dynamics Engine
Abstract:
The aim of this project would be to program a virtual world using DirectX, OpenGL, or Ogre and the Open Dynamics Engine, (the physics engine used in games such as Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl) to build a simulated world for a programmable robot to inhabit. The robot, might be a fork lift or be a humanoid and would have to perform physical tasks in the world.
Tags: Digital Games

Title: Electronic tune teacher
Abstract:
At a traditional music class to teach a tune, the teacher typically breaks the tune down into smaller phrases. The teacher then plays a phrase and the students repeat the phrase until it is learned. Then the teacher moves onto the the next phrase. This project would be an electronic version of the tune teacher. It would use the ABC files as input. The program would first analyse a tune to be learned and break it into manageable phrases, depending on the users ability. Then the program would play the phrase and allow the user to play it back. The program would repeat this until the student got it right. This would require the program to be able to analyse the piece the student played for accuracy. Once the student gets it right, the program would move onto the next phrase. The
program should also support speech commands, so that a student could control the program without leaving down their instrument.
Tags: Computer Music, Imagine Cup

Feel free to contact me if you are interested in undertaking projects or collaborations in any of these or related areas.

OLD Resources for undergraduate/MSc project students:

Getting started with Eclipse and Tomcat

Getting started with Tomcat and NetBeans

The student management project - Demonstrates a simple JSP/Java Beans framework. HTML and VXML interfaces to a shared database

The DIT Library eJournal portal

Last Updated: 18 October 2009
Contact me at: bryan.duggan@dit.ie