For our team project, we will be designing and creating an interactive map with virtual tour features for the Long Island Museum. Our project will use the Xbox Kinect to interact with a projected virtual map of the Long Island museum. The user will use their hands to select areas of interest in the museum promoting a brief bio of the selected area to reassure the users’ interests. The virtual map will then project the room of the selected area along with the items in the room on display. The user can then interact with any of the displayed items to get more information and or a brief animation of that item in use.    

To create our project we would require a projector, an Xbox Kinect, and a computer. The computer would be used to run the program and play the interactive animations, the Xbox Kinect would be used to interact with the display, and the projector will be used for the user to view the map. Our biggest limitations will include making the Kinect work with a given PC, and accurately identifying the user’s intent through gesture.

Our approach isn’t necessarily new but would be a fun interactive way to help visitors of the museum become more interested in the displays and learn more about them. I believe it will be successful  because it is fairly cheap to set up, great for newcomers to the museum, and a fun way to keep kids interested in the environment

The Long Island Museum curators, looking for novel ways of introducing visitors to Long Island’s rich history, would see a great improvement to their museum in the introduction of this interface, as would other museum curators who may want a similar exhibit for their own museum.

Our project is fairly low risk, especially if only one unit is being created. The absolute worst case scenario would be our animations being unattractive and or our UI being buggy leading to disinterest in our project.

To create our project if assembled from scratch we would need a low-end computer approximately $300 dollars, a projector approximately $300 dollars, and an Xbox Kinect preferable the most recent model approximately $85 dollars. This totals to $685 dollars total.  

To fully create our project it will take at least two months to fully polish and become acquainted with the technology listed above.

We can be confident in our success if gesture identification is achieved around the mid-point of the project, and we manage to properly implement those gestures without too many false positives for triggering the desired information/media by the end.