Optimal configuration of active and backup servers for augmented reality cooperative games

Interactive applications as online games and mobile devices have become more and more popular in recent years. From their combination, new and interesting cooperative services could be generated. For instance, gamers endowed with Augmented Reality (AR) visors connected as wireless nodes in an ad-hoc network, can interact with each other while immersed in the game. To enable this vision, we discuss here a hybrid architecture enabling game play in ad-hoc mode instead of the traditional client-server setting. In our architecture, one of the player nodes also acts as the server of the game, whereas other backup server nodes are ready to become active servers in case of disconnection of the network i.e. due to low energy level of the currently active server. This allows to have a longer gaming session before incurring in disconnections or energy exhaustion. In this context, the server election strategy with the aim of maximizing network lifetime is not so straightforward. To this end, we have hence analyzed this issue through a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model and both numerical and simulation-based analysis shows that the backup servers solution fulfills its design objective

"di Piazza in Piazza": Reimagining Cultural Specific Interactions for People-centered Exhibitions

One of the most interesting innovations introduced by modern game console technologies has been that of new interaction systems which allow a large amount of people to interact all together with cultural artifacts and exhibits. Thank to them, human beings can interact with, manipulate and in some circumstances even hack digital contents, playing an active role and becoming part of cultural performance exhibitions. In this paper we present and discuss our recent experience in designing, implementing and putting in practice a hands-free interactive technology which lets visitors explore a hyper-multimedia system, playing a role of those who are able to transform historical audio clips and videos into a piece of public culture which needs to be lived together on a public place. The hands-free system in use is a part of a wider project (called \u201cdi Piazza in Piazza\u201d), which comes with the initiatives of the University of Bologna, currently chosen to be displayed at the 2015 Universal Exposition in Milan (EXPO 2015)