Wireless Multi-Hop Localization Games for Entertainment Computing

Ad-hoc networking capabilities have provided the flexibility needed to construct various types of networks without infrastructure base stations. Emerging products for sensor networks, such as Zigbee (1), use ad-hoc networking capabilities to construct networks. These sensor nodes can construct the network such as in outdoor fields and inside buildings without much effort on establishing the base stations, and monitor neighbor information on area where people usually cannot stay for the monitoring. The technique of ad-hoc networking has been discussed within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) by the Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) Working Group (2). MANET is a promising technique to provide the alternative network infrastructure such as in the disaster case that the existing network infrastructures are destroyed because of fires and earthquakes. The wireless terminals with radio capabilities relay data and deliver to a desired destination. Recently, mobile game consoles with ad-hoc networking capabilities have been produced by companies such as Nintendo (3) and Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) (4). Networking capabilities play an important role in enabling multiple players to join together to play games. Since the ad-hoc networking technique is independent of the infrastructure network, it is easy for a player to join a game through a wireless network. To utilize this functionality, some games using ad-hoc networking capabilities have been developed. However, the games released thus far only use ad-hoc networking capabilities for joining the game. We have developed two wireless multi-hop localization games with ad-hoc networking capabilities, and have presented several initial results in (29). The proposed games, a war game and a tag game, are based on classical field games. Players use mobile game consoles with ad-hoc networking capabilities to move around a field. The games use wireless multi-hop localization to estimate node positions. Players on one team jointly establish an ad-hoc network to estimate their positions and compete for positioning accuracy with the other team. We used a previously developed multi-hop localization technique called ROULA (28). We used simulation to evaluate the multi-hop localization games and analyze their characteristics. We found that node velocity and obstruction position controlled the win rate for the games, and maintaining connectivity and local rules led to higher win rates for the games. The results revealed that the proposed games worked well as localization applications using the ad-hoc networking capabilities. 33