AUGMENTED REALITY BOARD GAME USING PGA

As the game industry grows with the rapid growth of computers and the Internet, users want new pleasant experiences in various fields of computer games. In order to satisfy the users' request, several researchers have introduced digital board games providing traditional board games with computer-generated effects. Previous games have used two working-spaces which are a public space where all players participate and a private one for each user. In this paper, we propose a portable game assistant(PGA) providing a strategy/helper module to the existing private space on an augmented reality(AR) board game environment as the public space. The user directly controls virtual objects, which are displayed on a physical plane through a projector, with their hands on the AR board environment, and uses the PGA executed on a PDA to easily and interestedly play the game. The proposed environment with a direct user behavior and the PGA is applicable to AR Othello, and is simply applicable to other AR board games.