RFID Enabled Middleware For Wide Area Gaming

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RFID Enabled Middleware For Wide Area Gaming
BRINGING THE SPECIFICS INTO LOCATION
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Overview
Area Wide area gaming is a strand of gaming that
has great potential but is hampered by existing
technology and standards.
Tools at present GPS is the most commonly used
technology in this area but it has some serious
limitations especially in urban areas where this
type of gaming is most popular.
Our approach This project seeks to solve this by
utilising can RFID in gaming and other wide area
applications as the location determining
technology.
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Determining Location

• GPS (Global Positioning System), is able to show
  ones position on the Earth. GPS satellites, 24 in
  all, orbit at 11,000 nautical miles above the
  Earth. They are continuously monitored by ground
  stations located worldwide.
• Pro No need for network infrastructure, cheap
  receivers
• Con High buildings, need line of sight

2. Cellular Triangulation is a process by which
the location of a radio transmitter can be
determined by measuring either the radial
distance, or the direction, of the received
signal from 2 or 3 different points. The distance
is determined by measuring the relative time
delays in the signal from the mobile set to 3
different base stations. Pro Technology in
existence, we all have phones Con Coarse
readings, pricey, reflection of signals
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Wide Area Gaming
Wide Area Gaming is a branch of computer games
where the real world location of the players and
actual geography of an area becomes elements in
the game. Wide area gamers have harnessed the
power of GPS, high-resolution screens of handheld
computers, cameras and the latest mobile phones
to play games across towns and cities, where they
become spies, vampire slayers and even Pac-Man.
These technologies allow the players to track the
path taken by them and their friends through an
area. This means that these games can now be tied
to location, bringing together communities of
gamers or setting them against each other in
treasure hunt games that unfold in the real
world. These wide area games can take many forms
but as a rule, they take place outdoors and on a
much larger scale than normal computer games.
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WAG Examples
GPS Tron based on the 1980s classic arcade game
Tron. In the original Tron the object is to
surround the computer's yellow cycle with a trail
of light emitted from the back of Trons blue
cycle. If the players cycle runs into the side
walls or light from any of the other cycles, he
dies. In the new wide area game, GPS Tron,
players drive around in their cars with GPS
enabled mobile phones leaving virtual trails
Classic
Modern
Classic
Pacmanhattan is an wide area game played in New
York, which recreate the 1980s arcade game
Pacman. Players play the parts of Pacman and the
ghosts with the Pacman player running around the
streets trying to gather all the virtual dots
while trying to avoid the players playing the
ghosts. The system uses mobile phones, WiFi
connections and some custom software
Modern
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WAG Examples
Monopoly Live was a game launched by Hasbro where
the 18 London taxis with GPS tracking devices and
tracked them over the internet. Online players
could pick their taxi driver, pick the properties
you want to own and watch as the taxis drive
around London hoping that they will land on your
property. Monopolylive.com let you play Monopoly
in the real London with 18 real cabs fitted with
GPS systems as your movers
Uncle Roy All Around You developed at the
University of Nottingham, UK, as part of a
European effort called the Integrated Project on
Pervasive Gaming. A player has just an hour to
find the eponymous Uncle Roy by following
instructions or clues fed to him via cellphone
text messages. But every time he moves, the
positioning technology on his phone transmits his
exact location onto a virtual map of London,
allowing other players in the game to track his
movements and hunt him down. Meanwhile a small
band of performance artists called Blast Theory
shadow the player like spies manipulating him in
his quest to find Uncle Roy.
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RFID
RFID can trace its roots back to the 1930s when
many countries were trying to solve the problem
of identifying aircraft as friends or foe. Before
the advent of radar technology, distinctive
colours and markings identified planes however
radar showed only a featureless dot on the
screen. The solution to this problem was termed
IFF, which means, Identify friend or foe and
was invented by the British in 1939. A
transponder was placed on every plane and when
the transponder received a signal of a certain
frequency from ground based radar stations it
would then send back a signal of the same
frequency with greater amplitude, which
identified it as a friendly plane (later becoming
the basis of air traffic control systems
worldwide.)
An RFID system consists of two parts, a
transponder/ tag and a reader. A typical RFID tag
consists of an integrated circuit (IC) connected
to an antenna and mounted on a silicon substrate.
The IC stores the unique serial number of the tag
and may have extra memory. Tag memory can vary
greatly from one-bit tags to the 64 kilobyte tags
used by Boeing Airbus
Tags are packaged in a number of different ways
depending on their planned application. They can
be embedded in to adhesive labels that can then
be printed called smart labels, embedded in to
car keys and plastic cards for access control and
they can also housed in glass cases to be
injected under the skin of humans and animals.
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RFID Tags
There are two broad categories of RFID tags
defined by the source of their power, passive and
active. Passive tags are the most popular tags in
use today as they are substantially cheaper to
produce than active tags.
A passive tag does not contain a power source and
draws its power from the electromagnetic energy
emitted by the reader, which induces a current in
the tags antenna and transmits the data stored in
the tag back to the reader. Passive tags
typically only have a read range of only a few
centimetres.
Active Tags have their own power source,
typically a battery, which is used to power the
IC and transmit the tags data without the need
for a reader. This allows for much larger read
ranges than passive tags, usually around 30
metres but this can be boosted to 100 metres
using specialised antennas
An active RFID tag being installed on an ISO
shipping container. The tags are programmed with
commodity data for the container contents. By
using the handheld readers companies can quickly
and easily locate the equipment they require.
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RFID Tags
Other kinds of tags are semi-passive and
chipless. Semi-passive tags use a built in
battery to power the onboard IC but still uses
the readers energy to transmit. Chipless tags
which do not contain an IC or memory and the id
of the tag is encoded by the unique patterns of
materials that reflect back the readers signal.
As they do not have an IC, they do not require
the extra energy standard passive tag do so have
a greater read range and are cheaper to produce.
Other characteristics of RFID tags are the memory
type. Read-only tags have the data written at the
time of manufacture and it cannot be changed.
This essentially makes them tamperproof. Chipless
tags would fall in this category. Write-once read
many tags have the tamperproof benefit but with
the added ability to write data to the tag once
after manufacture. Read/Write tags as the name
suggests can be written to as well as read
Here we see an RFID sticker that can be affixed
to patients to help verify what they are there
for.  The patients name and site of surgery are
digitally encoded on the card, and readers decode
the information.  Rather than simply ask, Where
should I cut you? patients are then asked to
verify the information on the chip.  Imagine the
hacking potential here.
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RFID Readers
Readers send out pulses of radio energy that
power the tag and then listens for the response
from the tag. Even though they are referred to as
readers, many of them are capable of also writing
to the tags.
The RF signal of the reader can contain a number
of different commands for the tag, including a
request to read different portions of the memory
and requests to write to the tags memory. The
reader is also capable of communicating the
information it has gathered to a computer over a
serial, Ethernet or wireless connection.
The RFID reader and tag can communicate using a
number of different frequencies and currently
most RFID systems use unlicensed spectrum. The
most common frequencies that RFID systems use are
low frequency (125 KHz), High Frequency (13.56
MHz), Ultra High Frequency (860 960 MHz) and
Microwave Frequency (2.4 GHz). In the past most
RFID readers were only able to read tags of a
single frequency but multimode readers that are
capable of reading tags of different frequencies
are becoming cheaper and more popular.
The distance over which the reader and tag can
communicate is called the read field. The size of
the read field is determined by the antennae on
both the reader and tag, the frequency used and
the power of the reader.
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Aha I think I get it (But to be sure, Ill
just sit here and look intelligent) So to
recapcomputer games and board games all have
there own fans but how about using a whole city
as your game board. That is what many people
around the world are doing. Some are playing life
sized Pacman on city streets and others are
solving a trail of clues to find a hidden
treasure. It is a phenomenon that is known
variously as Urban gaming, Wide area gaming or
location based gaming. It has been around since
the 1990s but it has not made it to the
mainstream mainly due to limitations cost of
the technology. However, with Wi-Fi becoming
embedded in almost every portable device urban
gaming is on the cusp of making it big. Radio
frequency identification, however allows the
identification of a tagged object through the
unique serial number it transmits. It is part of
a broad range of automatic identification
technologies. By bringing these two technologies
together, it is hoped that a Wide area game can
be developed without the limitations of the
currently used technology.
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UU Engineering to the Rescue.
If we build it, they will come
Therefore in collaboration with Meedja Ltd (A
Dundalk based Gaming company), we have received
funding under the InterTradeIreland FUSION scheme
to create a Wide Area Gaming Middleware which
utilises RFID as the location determining
technology.
We are currently refining the middleware
architecture at the moment and we have just
finished prototype 1 wireless X Os. The
rest of the talk describes the components of this
prototype. 1. the Client game which runs on the
mobile device providing the user with a graphical
interface. 2. The class which interacts with the
Compact Flash RFID reader allowing the game to
control it. 3. The database that stores
information about each player and the state of
play in each game. 4. The web service that
facilitates communication between the client
application and the database over the network, be
it wired or wireless.
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1. The Client
The game was designed to be calibrated by the
player so any tag could be placed in any position
in the grid prior to beginning of the game and
the game would then be taught the positions of
the tags. This is because the RFID tags are
visually identical to each other with no
distinguishing markings. The user is given visual
indication as to which tag to scan and informed
when a successful read of the tag has taken
place/ Error checking is done here to ensure nine
distinct tags have been read. If the same tag id
is read more than once the user will be prompted
that this has occurred.
Setting Up the Board
Calibration of Game
When all nine tags have been scanned the client
then sends the tag ids to the web service which
returns to the client a player id. If the web
service cannot be contacted an error message is
presented to the user which allows them to try to
connect again.
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2. Web Service
The web service provides the client application
with a number of operations as explained below.
The SetTagLocations operation is used in the
setup of the game where the client sends the list
of tag ids and their associated locations to the
web service. This operation then writes this data
to the database to the corresponding fields and
returns to the client their player number.
The WaitForTurn operation, when called by the
client, causes the client to wait until the other
player has successfully scanned a tag. This is
done by performing lookups of the lastTagID field
of the table tbltags. The lastTagID field
contains the id of the last tag to be
successfully scanned by either client and this
corresponds to the last move made in the game. By
monitoring this field until it has been changed
by the other player the client will essentially
wait for its turn.
The GetTagLocFromTagID operation performs a
lookup of the database to determine the actual
grid location of tag from a tag id supplied by
the client application. ResetDB clears the
information of the last game played from the
database to allow a new game to be played.
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3. The Database
The database consists of two tables called
tblplayers and tbltags. Tblplayers contains
information about the players who are playing the
game including the IP address of the client and
the player id assigned to client by the game.
Tbltags contains information about the tags on
the players board including the tag id, its
location on the board and the player to which the
tag belongs.
Tables of the Game Database Schema
Contents of tbltags
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Prototype in Action
A short Video Clip of the Prototype will be shown
here
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Conclusion

• .Being involved in Urban Gaming is not all about
  GPS and Cellular Triangulation
• Being involved with RFID is not all about supply
  Chain ZZZzzzzzzz
• ..No, sometimes the worlds can collide such as
  here
• X Os is not the end. No, the goal is the
  creation of a Middleware which allows
  heterogeneous mobile/RFID devices to plug and
  play with ease using our architecture

Special Big Thanks to Derek Harkin, BEng final
year Ian Tierney, Meedja Ltd