Visual Marker Board Game Tracking via Image Analysis
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing board games face challenges in tracking and updating the complex status of numerous game pieces and scoring systems, which limits gameplay interactivity and requires expensive, hard-to-upgrade hardware, leading to reduced enjoyment and increased costs.
Innovation Solution
An intelligent board game system utilizing visual markers on game objects, cameras, and a processing device to track and identify game pieces, allowing for software updates and reduced hardware requirements, enabling pinpoint location resolution and faster performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If expensive hardware is used to track and update game piece status, then tracking accuracy and interactivity are improved, but system cost and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses visual markers (copies) placed on game pieces that can be captured by standard cameras. Instead of using complex expensive tracking hardware, the system creates optical copies of identification data that can be read by conventional imaging devices, thereby reducing system complexity while maintaining tracking accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces mechanical/optical tracking systems with complex hardware with a software-based image processing system. Standard cameras capture images of visual markers, and software algorithms extract game piece information, substituting complex mechanical tracking with simpler optical capture and computational processing.
2Device complexity
If manual tracking methods are used for numerous game pieces, then system complexity is reduced, but productivity and gameplay efficiency deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The visual markers on game pieces contain encoded information that automatically identifies each piece's status, location, and properties. The system serves itself by having the markers provide their own identification data without requiring manual tracking or complex external systems, thereby improving gameplay efficiency with minimal added complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent encodes multiple pieces of information (identification, status, location) into the visual markers using varying parameters such as concentric ring patterns, colors, and arrangements. This allows a single visual element to convey multiple data points, improving productivity by reducing the number of separate tracking mechanisms needed.
3Ease of manufacture
If fixed hardware systems are used for board games, then initial setup is simplified, but adaptability and upgradeability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a dynamic system where the hardware remains simple and fixed (standard cameras and processors), but the software and visual markers can be dynamically changed and upgraded. This allows the system to adapt to different games and rules without requiring hardware changes, maintaining ease of manufacture while improving adaptability.
Solution Approach 2:
The visual marker system and image processing software are designed to be universal, capable of tracking and identifying various types of game pieces across different board games. The same hardware platform can support multiple games through software configuration and different marker designs, providing upgradeability without complicating the basic system setup.
4Measurement precision
If detailed tracking of individual game pieces is implemented, then measurement precision is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The visual markers are segmented into distinct components (concentric rings, colored sections, patterns) that encode different pieces of information. This segmentation allows the system to extract precise location and status data from each marker independently, achieving high measurement precision through simple image analysis rather than complex tracking hardware.
Data Source
AI summary
A board game system comprises one or more game objects, a processing device, a memory device and one or more cameras. Each of the game objects comprise a unique visual marker positioned on a top surface of the game object, wherein the unique visual marker comprises a series of concentric rings that represent data that uniquely identifies the game object. As a result, during the course of game play, the location and identification of the game objects are able to be determined by the processing device by analyzing images captured by the one or more cameras of the visual markers of the game objects on the game board. The processing device is able to compare the data of the visual markers to a table stored in the memory device that associates the data with a specific game object.